


Red America

by WulfenOne



Series: Red America [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 18:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12086928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WulfenOne/pseuds/WulfenOne
Summary: The Soviet Union won the Cold War, and now the USA is under its boot. Standing against seemingly insurmountable odds, Jim Logan and his rag-tag group of rebels fight to overthrow the masters of North America. Their secret weapon is a young girl by the name of Kitty Pryde.





	1. Land Of The Free

Jim Logan heard the curfew sirens going off and looked up from the small fire he was building in the centre of the floor. The ruined building he was sheltered in was enough to shield him from prying eyes, but it also gave him a limited view of the outside world, which annoyed him. Although he had an excellent overall sense of the situation around him thanks to his other four senses, he didn't like not being able to look at what was going on without the risk of getting a bullet from an assault rifle between the eyes.

_Russkies are callin' curfew early tonight,_  he thought sourly. _Wonder what lit a fire under their asses today..._ It could be any one of a thousand different things, he reflected – rebel attacks on Soviet convoys in Montana, perhaps, or shortages of food for citizens, or a lack of adequate winter clothing for the Soviet armed forces. Risking a glance out of one of the shattered windows, Logan looked out and saw citizens being herded out of the streets by angry-looking Russian soldiers, and he also saw a lot of armour, tanks and half-tracks packing serious armament, trundling up the main roads that led to most of Brooklyn. The tarmac was pretty mashed up, thanks to the dozens of rebel bombs that had gone off in this neighbourhood, but the Soviet tanks simply ground it up like mincemeat, flattening it beneath their super-heavy treads. Logan suppressed a smile at that – in his experience, the Ivans didn't get out that much armour unless the rebels had done something pretty significant. Of course, so many tanks meant that the Reds were going to put a hurting on some poor bastard, regardless of whether or not he was a resistance fighter, so Logan was in two minds about whether or not he was truly pleased about the fact that the Russians were making such a public show of force.

He looked up at the ragged Stars and Stripes on the wall (which had been set there by the other members of the resistance cell who shared this rat-hole with Logan, despite the fact that to show the flag so obviously was punishable by execution. But then again, Logan supposed, in this day and age, "give me liberty or give me death" had become even more relevant), and smiled roughly. "Looks like it's gonna be a big day tomorrow," he said, before he used the gold-plated lighter he'd stolen from the body of a Russian soldier to ignite the small pile of smashed chair legs and other kindling in front of him. He warmed his hands against the fire's nascent glow, and decided to try and keep his head down for the moment.

America had been this way for years now. During World War Two, when Logan had been a member of the Canadian army, he had watched with horror as the Russians dropped an enormous hydrogen bomb on the shattered city of Berlin, bringing the war in Europe to a horrendous and bloody end. And that was only the start – from there, America was powerless to stop the Communist bloc engulfing Europe, with Britain losing its independence only a few years after the war. The United Kingdom had been the last country in Europe to be free of Communist influence, and with its staunchest ally in that part of the world now a one-party state, America had to withdraw in on itself, becoming technologically-sluggish and lagging behind the Soviets' superior military capability. It was powerless to prevent Castro inviting the USSR to place mid-range nuclear missiles on Cuba, or to prevent the Communist victory in Mexico – and when the Soviets invaded Canada, it could do nothing to prevent itself from becoming encircled by the world's only superpower.

Logan had escaped Canada then, hoping that the USA would make a pre-emptive stand of some kind against its predicament, but his hopes had been unfounded. Three years later, the Soviet navy had surfaced in New York harbour after low-flying drones had scouted out the landscape (drones which had been stupidly dismissed as weather balloons by a sceptical American government), and Soviet troops had poured across the Canadian border and into New York City in a standard, but effective pincer movement. And now the situation had disintegrated into this – the Soviets' dictatorial rule over the United States had virtually crushed all resistance, bar a hardcore cadre of battle-hardened fighters determined to throw out the oppressors once and for all.

Jim Logan was one of those men, and he was currently part of a resistance cell that was sheltering in New York. With his fifty years of experience, Logan knew how to procure arms and ammunition – and despite the scars that criss-crossed his body like train tracks, and the few stray specks of grey in his hair, Logan could still join in with his younger counterparts' missions. The strange bone claws that he'd discovered in his hands helped with that – he had no idea how he'd survived so long, either, but as long as he could make his mark on the Russkies, Logan didn't much care.

A slight noise at the smashed doorway made Logan look up suddenly, those same claws sliding from between his knuckles in the blink of an eye, and a bestial growl issuing from between his lips. "Password," he snarled.

"You're an asshole, Logan, you know that?" said the man at the door, who was carrying several bloodstained Soviet Army rifles over his shoulder, along with a few boxes of ammunition. He moved over to where the fire was just beginning to crackle into more vigorous life, and sat down across from Logan in order to warm his hands. Logan sprang over the flames in the blink of an eye, and extended the claws from his right fist so that they pricked the other man's throat.

"Give me the password, you little punk," he said, his voice deathly cold, "or I swear I'll cut your fucking throat out."

Terror-scent wafted up from the other man, pleasing Logan inwardly, and he said "Okay, Logan… 'Yankees'. That okay by you?" Logan nodded, and let him sit back up, withdrawing the claws back into his hand as he did so.

"Welcome back, Scott," he said, letting the other man catch his breath. The guy's eyes were a weird red colour, which creeped Logan out every time he looked at him, but other than that, he was an okay guy, and had pulled Logan's fat out of the fire more than once. "What's the word?"

"Russkies are moving so much armour around out there that we can't get a fix on any viable targets," Scott said, sounding sullenly disappointed. "We lost Parker out there today. The Ivans shot him in the face when they caught him – splashed his brains all over Central Park." Scott punched the ground then, tears welling from his eyes as he remembered the incident. "Stupid fucking idiot. He knew what they'd do to him, ever since the Bronx bombs – and he let them catch him anyway." He rubbed at his face tiredly. "Dammit, I should've expected this. Guy never was the same after the bastards shot his aunt."

Logan nodded silently. Parker had had a thousand-yard stare ever since his old aunt had been murdered on national TV, after he'd escaped the Soviets following the crippling of an army base in the Bronx. It had been, he thought, only a matter of time before Parker made one dumb mistake too many.  _Guess tonight was the night,_  he thought sourly, before reaching over to a large wooden box and fishing out a bottle of room-temperature beer (which actually made it pretty cold). Holding it by its long neck, he offered it to Scott. "Want a beer?" he asked, in such a way as to try and distract the younger man from what had happened earlier. Nodding in gratitude, Scott took it and pulled the metal lid off with his teeth, spitting the cap into a knot of rats in the corner. They scattered, squeaking indignantly, drawing a distasteful sneer from Scott as one of them ran towards him. He shooed it away, kicking at it with one hobnailed boot.

"Damned rats," he muttered, grimacing, and taking a generous swig of his beer. He swallowed it after savouring its flavour for a second or so, and then said "Some others are on their way – they'll be here in about half an hour."

"Sounds like we're gonna have ourselves a nice little party," Logan said, using one bony claw to pop the cap off the bottle of beer he'd found for himself, before taking a thoughtful measure from it. "You reckon the Reds won't be able to trace 'em?"

Scott shook his head. "Nah," he said, belching. "Call it intuition, but I'm thinking the Reds won't be able to find them at all." Then his dour expression broke into an excited grin, and he continued "Seems like Jamie found a kid in Chicago who could jump right through walls – he said her name was Katie, or something. The underground brought her here last night to help us out. Looks like we found ourselves a secret weapon, chief."

"Is that right?" Logan snorted, and extended the claws on his right hand. "Well, what am I, kid? Chopped liver?"

"Yeah, well, no offence, guy, but you're not exactly a spring chicken any more –" Scott began, before Logan popped a single claw and sliced the neck of his beer bottle in half in the blink of an eye, causing the rest of the bottle to fall to the floor and shatter. Stale-smelling alcohol splashed all over Scott's trousers, making him curse. Then he noticed Logan's self-satisfied smirk, and said "All right, I take it back. Now get me another beer before I tell the Russkies where your favourite bar is."

Knowing that the younger man was serious – and even more importantly, knowing what the Russians would do if they found the speakeasy that he frequented as often as he could – Logan tossed Scott another beer without another word. Scott caught it one-handed, and opened it as quickly as he had the first, taking a mouthful and swilling it around for a second or two before letting it slide down his throat.

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the doorway, and several dirty, exhausted people hammered on the smashed door in order to ask permission to enter. Logan shouted his assent and then went through the same procedure that he'd been through with Scott with each of the new arrivals. None of them made the kind of fuss that Scott had – mostly because they'd known Logan slightly longer, and had learned not to get him annoyed. One of them, a rangy young man with floppy brown hair and a naturally cheerful face smeared with camouflage paint said "Evening, gents. When's room service getting here?" He slapped the wall with his hand, and an exact duplicate appeared from thin air, which then replicated itself, and so on until five identical men stood in the room where only one had been before.

Logan snorted. Jamie Madrox wasn't exactly known for keeping his strange gift to himself – no matter how many of him there happened to be at any one time. Still, he was glad to have the kid around, because Jamie did often provide a means of making bad situations seem better than they were. "Looks like they already did," he replied, to which the five Jamies all took a slight bow, an expansive grin spreading across all five faces, before one particular Jamie reabsorbed all the others and then stood alone once again. Logan noticed that in the knot of freedom fighters (which was evenly split between men and women) behind Madrox was a young girl, who couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Her dark chestnut hair was cut close to her scalp in an almost military style. A purple, un-patterned bandanna was tied around her brow, and just underneath the lower edge of the ragged t-shirt she wore, Logan could see that she had a curling, lengthy tattoo of a Chinese dragon on her stomach, her navel decorated with a single piercing. He pushed himself to his feet and walked towards the stony-eyed young lady, before sticking out a hand and saying "Welcome to the New York resistance, kid. My name's Jim Logan. You must be Katie."

"Kitty," the girl said firmly, taking Logan's hand and squeezing it with a grip that surprised him with its strength. "My name's Kitty." She looked around the room for a moment, sizing up the accommodation – such as it was – and then said "Don't suppose you got a cigarette? Only I ran out before we came out here, and –"

"Relax, kid. Relax." Logan walked over to where he'd got the beers from and put his hand into another box, drawing out a slightly dirty pack of contraband American-made cigarettes and throwing them to the girl. She caught the pack without even looking, a slow smile of relief spreading across her face. "There you go." Kitty took a long cigarette out of the pack, put it between her lips, and ignited an ornate lighter before taking a grateful drag.

Blowing out a long stream of blue smoke, she said "So what can I do for you? Resistance out west had me stealing stuff from the Ivans' weapons depots in Chicago, but I don't think you want me doing something so… passive, do you?" She raised her cigarette to her lips again and inhaled once more, causing the grey tip to glow orange for a moment or so. "So spill it."

"What if we were goin' to ask you to do that, kid?" Logan asked, suddenly curious about this obviously battle-hardened girl. He could smell the faint residual odour of gun oil and plastic explosive on her, and it intrigued him a great deal.

"I'd do it," Kitty replied. "Anything that hurts the Reds is good enough for me – but I want something a little more… exciting. Can I seduce one of the regional governors?" An impish grin spread across her pretty face at that, and she laughed. "Not like I haven't had experience in that, after all. Plenty of Russkie soldiers have gone out with a smile on their faces, if you know what I mean… before I started cutting, anyway." From a bandolier strung around her hips she produced a small switchblade, extending the blade in the blink of an eye by pressing the small stud on the handle's side, and twirled the weapon around expertly before hurling it at the opposite wall. The blade speared a rat as it hurtled towards the chipped plaster, which twitched and thrashed in its death throes. Without bothering to look at what she'd done, Kitty drew another knife, a long-bladed dagger this time, flicked some ash into the heart of the fire and gave Logan a calm, collected look. "So what do you need me for?"

"Sorry, kid," Scott said, looking away from the rat's corpse distastefully. "Nothing that exciting."

"Well, don't keep a girl waiting," Kitty replied, extracting some dirt from under her fingertips with the point of her knife. "Give me an idea of what you want from me."

"We need you to keep our guys company while they hit the Soviets' bases," Scott explained, spreading his hands expansively. "You'll be their escape hatch – you can walk through walls, so you're going to help our guys do the same. Understand?"

"Completely." Kitty shrugged, dropping her cigarette to the floor and crushing it out with the toe of her boot. "You're the boss, man."

"Good. I'd hate to think I couldn't count on you in a crisis," Scott told her, sounding all business (not for the first time, Logan noted. Scott seemed a natural in the leadership role, as if he'd been born for it), before he turned to the rest of the resistance cell and said "Anybody else got anything to say before we head back to base?" One of the women fighters, a slender redhead with piercing green eyes, raised her hand from the barrel of the assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Scott nodded to her in acknowledgement. "What is it, Mary Jane?"

Mary Jane cleared her throat before she produced a small slip of paper from a pocket on her fatigues, which were stained here and there with long brown streaks of blood. "I found this on the body of one of the Red soldiers," she said in a voice that seemed totally unsuited to her grimy, downtrodden exterior. "It looks like… orders for something, I think. Then again, might just be a love letter from the guy's Babushka back home." She shook her head, and her brows crumpled in frustration. "I never was much good at reading Russkie," she said, handing the paper to Logan. "Here. See if you can make any sense of it."

Logan took the paper and scanned it with one swift glance. It wasn't orders, and it sure as hell wasn't a love letter, but it was definitely plans for something or other. Precisely what, he couldn't say, but it did partially explain the movement of all the Soviet armour outside. The neighbourhood was due for "cleansing", so the paper said, and that was evidently why they were massing so much heavy gear here. "We gotta get outta here," he said quickly. "They're gonna bomb this neighbourhood to pieces."

Another of the female freedom fighters, a nimble, athletic blonde, said "They couldn't do that this quickly, could they?" Her gloved hands fidgeted anxiously as she spoke – a leftover symptom of her captivity in the local Russian gulag – and she kept adjusting the sunglasses that hung from a cord around her neck, which were the last remnants she had of her former life as a music sensation. "I mean, we're safe here for a day, right?"

"I've seen 'em turn places to dust an' bones in a day, kid," Logan snorted, before he gestured out of the cracked windows at the rumble of tank treads. "You think those things out there are loaded with blanks? If we stay here, they'll find us –"

"I'm not going back in that prison," the woman stated, shaking her head almost frantically. "I can't. You can't let them take me." Scott stepped forwards then and took her hands in his, locking his red-eyed gaze with hers.

"Alison," he said quietly. "Alison, listen to me. I promise you're not going to go back in that prison. You have my word on that."

"You promise?" Alison said, uncertainly, as she tried to get her breathing to slow down to somewhere approaching normal.

"Cross my heart," Scott replied, marking a cross over his chest, before kissing her tenderly on the mouth.

And it was then that the world unravelled, blooming into bright white noise and jagged, rough-edged pain.

Something ripped through the building from outside, causing the old walls to crumble into fragments almost instantly. People screamed as bricks and mortar came down on top of them, killing some and burying others, and leaving still more stunned and dazed. Logan saw Scott stumble and fall unconscious, his ears and nose trickling blood, and he knew that he was going to have to get out of here and bring help from somewhere else. He couldn't tell exactly what had hit them, but he knew it couldn't have been a shell, because he could smell no trace of ozone or gunpowder. As he pushed himself out of a pile of old bricks and tried to stand, a jagged cut closing rapidly on his brow, he saw what it was that had opened up the hideout like a side of beef.

In front of him, clad in a standard Red Army uniform, was a huge, imposing giant of a man – only it seemed that it wasn't a man at all, but rather a giant metal statue given life. Furious at the death and injury (serious or otherwise) of so many of his comrades, Logan threw himself at the giant, who simply endured the frenzied, enraged slashing of Logan's claws with nothing but puzzlement before grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and heaving him off his feet. "Greetings, tovarisch," the man-mountain said in halting English - evidently he was a recent draftee into the Red Army, and hadn't learned much of the language yet - before he turned away and said something in Russian to an unseen observer.

Logan turned his head to see where the soldier was looking, and he saw, emerging from the shadows outside, a statuesque woman who was wearing a uniform similar to the colossus. Her blonde hair was bound up in a tight bun and she regarded Logan with something that was one step away from bottomless contempt. He spat at her feet and snarled "You're gonna pay for this, you Russkie bitch."

The woman's cold, yet strikingly seductive violet eyes narrowed, and she backhanded him across the face with surprising force. "Talk only if I ask you to talk," she stated simply, in cultured English tones which had apparently been edged with touches of the Russian pronunciation of certain sounds, before she examined her gloved knuckles to make sure that none of Logan's blood had stained the black leather. "Now listen carefully, little man. I am Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock, and I have been put in charge of this little incursion into your rebel territory. If you co-operate with me, your people may live. If you do not, they will die, and you will watch them bleed out. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," Logan said. He knew that if he seemed to co-operate now, he could buy his fellow freedom fighters time to reorganise and mount a counter-offensive.

Whether or not he survived to see it was a different matter altogether, though…


	2. Oh Say Can You See

_Christ, I need a cigarette_.

Kitty Pryde could still feel her heart hammering in her chest as the Russian tanks rolled away from her hiding place. She had managed to escape the Soviet soldiers who had been combing the area for rebel soldiers by phasing herself into the sewer system, where she knew she'd be safe (for a little while, at least), and now she was feeling confident enough to poke her head above ground again. She didn't know why she was so scared – she'd seen plenty of urban combat in Chicago, and had killed Russian soldiers with both her knives and her bare hands, after all – but she thought that it probably had something to do with the metal-skinned giant who had ripped a hole in the building she'd been standing in. He had towered over the old man she'd only met a few minutes before – standing, she guessed, about seven feet tall, and packing more raw physical power than she'd ever seen in Russkie soldiers out west. She could still see the look on his face as he ripped a hole in the wall: his expression had seemed to be filled with a total devotion to what he was doing, with no room for anything else.

Kitty shuddered at the memory, ducked back into the stinking sewer, and then reached into her pocket to find the pack of cigarettes that she'd managed to scrounge off the old man. It was miraculously undamaged (she supposed that having the ability to phase out of the way of falling wood and concrete had more than its fair share of advantages), with only a few tears here and there to show for what it, and she, had just been through. Clicking her lighter into life, she lit a welcome cigarette, inhaled a lungful of smoke and then exhaled it in relief. Scratching her brow, she watched the curling grey trail edge its way upwards from the tip of her cigarette towards the manhole cover above her, and then took a second drag, feeling the shaking in her hands lessening slightly as she did so.

Before she could totally relax, however, a splashing noise came from behind her, making her almost jump out of her skin in the process. She whirled, a knife appearing in her hand in a flash of cold steel. She sprang at the noise, bowling over a dark shape and bringing them both down into the filthy, fetid water that lay ankle-deep in the tunnel.

"Hey, kid, cool it!" The voice came from the man called Jamie Madrox, who was dishevelled and dirty, his clothes ripped and a crusted scab above one eye. Trails of dried blood streaked his boyish features like the tributaries of a river. Kitty relaxed visibly, and put her knife back in her bandolier, standing up and pulling Madrox to his feet as she did so. Jamie dusted himself off, distastefully flicking a chunk of something unpleasant back into the water, and then continued "I see you're still as lively as ever, then."

"You got away too?" Kitty said, redundantly. Jamie nodded, but then shook his head.

"Well, yes and no," he said, before noting Kitty's confused expression. "Look, it's like this, kid: this version of me managed to get away, but one of me got captured. He'll be fine until I can reabsorb him, as long as he doesn't get too cut up or killed. Might give me a huge headache when I do find him, but we'll have to see, I guess."

"Where's Logan?" Kitty asked, feeling concern for the old man creeping up her spine like a snake.

"That British bitch captured him too," Jamie said, spitting the words out venomously. "We have to try and find him, kid – he's got too much information for the Reds to keep him prisoner. But we're a little low on guys and guns right now, so…" He looked down the tunnel, squinting into the darkness as he tried to see what lay ahead of them. "That way's south – I know there's a rebel base in Brooklyn, but I don't know exactly how to get there through these tunnels." He slapped the wall of the tunnel, and another Jamie popped into existence beside him. "But if I can ask this guy to scout ahead for us…"

"Gee, how polite of you," the other Jamie said, before sighing and making his way up the tunnel. "If I get killed, I'm going to strangle both of you."

"If you get killed, I'll say something nice at the funeral," the first Jamie called out as the second Jamie disappeared. Then he turned back to Kitty, and jerked a thumb towards the disappearing shape of his dupe. "Guy's a laugh riot, ain't he?"

"Yeah," Kitty said, feeling the ghost of a smile cross her lips as she did so – it was the first time she'd felt good since she'd been forced down into the sewers, in fact. "I noticed."

* * *

 

Logan grunted briefly and opened his eyes – and then quickly shut them again when he found that a harsh, bright light was shining directly at him. He felt like he'd been hit by a freight train – his brain had been rattled around his skull when that giant Russian had smashed him around the jaw with one huge fist, and even though the damage had healed, the ache still remained. When he was feeling brave enough to open his eyes again, he tried to take a look at his surroundings. Before he could do that, however, he got a slap around the face from a leather glove, as a feminine shadow fell across the bright light in front of him. Looking up, Logan saw that the blonde woman he'd encountered earlier was standing with her arms folded across her bosom.

"Good morning," she smirked, as Logan tried to wipe away the small trickle of blood he could feel at the edge of his mouth – and then found that his hands had been placed inside thick metal gauntlets, which enclosed his fists entirely and prevented him from popping his claws even a small amount. In addition, they were linked together by a solid steel bar that ran across his spine, preventing him from raising them even slightly. When Colonel Braddock saw that he had realised what had been done to him, her smile widened, and she continued "A necessary precaution, I assure you. Wouldn't want those nasty claws of yours to do anybody any harm, now would we?" Her smile faded then, and she said, in an utterly businesslike tone, "I'll make this simple for you, Mr Logan – I know who you are, and I know what kind of position you hold in the New York resistance movement. Now, in the interests of fairness, I'm going to give you a chance to tell me what I want to know, before I take it myself – and believe me, scum, if I do that, there won't be enough left of your brain to spread on a cracker."

Logan grinned, and spat a thick gobbet of bloody sputum at the woman's feet. "I've survived worse, bitch," he said defiantly. "Take your fairness and shove it up your –"

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," came another voice from behind Colonel Braddock. "I don't think you should be using such language around a lady, buddy. You might offend her delicate little ears." Logan turned his head to see another uniformed individual coming through the door of his cell – a young man with brown hair and a lopsided grin. Logan almost shuddered – he could see the devil in this young man's eyes, and smell the malice in his every step. "Long live the revolution, Comrade Braddock," the young man said briefly, saluting the woman in front of him.

"Long live the revolution, Comrade Drake," Colonel Braddock replied, saluting him almost absently, before gesturing to him and saying "This is Comrade Robert Drake. He has realised the folly of his decadent American ways and joined the forces of the glorious Red Army, and so he will be assisting me in this little… chat." She paused, and nodded to the young man. "Why don't you show him what you can do, Comrade Drake?"

"With pleasure," Drake chuckled, and then pointed a finger at Logan. Before Logan could say anything else, he saw a layer of ice start to build up around his ankles and then crawl up his legs, freezing him to the ground. When Logan couldn't move any more, Drake held out his other hand and formed a long, hard spike of ice – which he then drove right into Logan's shoulder. Breaking it off so that a sizeable chunk of it remained in the wound, Drake sneered "Now  _that's_  what I call a 'cold snap'." He snickered nastily, and then made the snapped-off lump of ice evaporate into thin air. Logan winced as the wound in his shoulder closed up, the frozen edges melting together almost instantly. "Are you going to play ball now, hairbag?"

"Fuck you, punk," Logan growled. "I ain't gonna tell you a goddamn thing."

"Ooh… wrong answer," Drake said as he wagged a finger at him, sounding almost pleased. Logan waited for another spike in the shoulder, but that didn't come. Instead, he felt a staggering pain in his skull, which seemed to almost be splitting in two under some pressure coming from deep within it. "You know what that is?" Drake said nastily. "I'm freezing the flow of blood to your pea-brain – if you don't start giving us some answers  _real soon_ , you'll end up thinking with the world's biggest Popsicle." He held up his right fist and clenched it, sparking waves of renewed pain in Logan's skull as more jagged ice crystals crawled through his bloodstream. "Tick-tock, tick-tock. Better make your mind up while you still have one… punk."

"Sooner die… than tell you anything," Logan gasped, feeling cold blood streaming from his nose. Drake raised an eyebrow, and seemed ready to freeze more of Logan's body for a moment or two, before Colonel Braddock grasped his arm and took him to one side.

"Enough," she said firmly. "Let me try my way." Sulkily, Drake stepped backwards and folded his arms, giving Logan an evil stare as he released his hold on him. As he stood in the corner of the cell, Colonel Braddock stepped forwards and put her fingertips on her temples – and at that point, a pinkish nimbus of energy flared into life around her eyes. Logan noted, through all the pain, that it was shaped like a butterfly (an absurdly pretty image, given their surroundings). "Do not try to resist me, Mr Logan," Colonel Braddock continued, "or the pain will get much,  _much_  worse. I assure you of that." Just at that moment, Logan felt a sensation like a dozen needles stabbing into the base of his spine, and then felt the woman's presence slithering inside his head, chewing up memories left and right as she did so. "Now, then. Let us begin…"

* * *

 

Kitty heard the sound of a gunshot from the tunnel ahead of her, and instinctively threw herself to the floor of the tunnel, kicking up a spray of stinking brown water as she did so. Beside her, Madrox crouched, flattened himself against the wall of the passageway and drew the pistol at his waistband. "Better get your ass up, kid," he hissed. "No time for a nap." Pushing herself to her feet, Kitty pulled her own pistol from its holster and joined Madrox, making sure to make herself as small a target as possible. Racking the slide on her gun, she heard the satisfying sound of a bullet sliding into the chamber, and tried desperately to slow her heartbeat down to somewhere below light-speed.

"I know you're out there!" came an ice-cold, utterly focused male voice from somewhere down the tunnel. "Might as well come out and make this easier on yourselves!"

"Gee, thanks for the choice," Kitty muttered, before shouting back "Don't shoot – we're Americans!" She heard the sound of a safety catch being clicked back on as it echoed throughout the tunnel, and then she felt brave enough to round the corner up ahead – and found herself in a vast antechamber, filled with weapons and ammunition from the 70s through to the 90s and beyond. In the corner, a battered flak jacket was hooked over a block of concrete, and on the wall was painted a vast, stylised white skull. In the centre of the room, though, was the most arresting aspect of the whole place. A man who was defiantly middle-aged (despite his muscular build) stood with an army-issue rifle pointed right at the centre of Jamie's dupe's chest. His jet-black hair was set into a thinning widow's peak, and his scarred face was ragged with age and bitter hatred. On the black t-shirt that covered his muscular frame was embossed a similarly stylised white skull, which grinned out at Madrox and Kitty like death itself.

Kitty recognised this man immediately from the heavily-censored Soviet Armed Forces Network broadcasts she'd sat through in Chicago – he'd been a bigger thorn in the Russians' side than any lone operator had any right to be, or so the SAFN anchorwoman Tatiana Kempinski had said as she dubbed him "The Punisher". Kitty swallowed the fear that gnawed at her guts and said "Frank Castle, I presume?"

The man put up his rifle (at which point Madrox's dupe breathed a visible sigh of relief) and raised an eyebrow. "You know me, kid, but I don't know you. Mind telling me what you were doing down here?"

"Hiding from the Reds, same as you are," Madrox cut in hastily. "We got ambushed by 'em and got separated from our unit. We were on our way to another rebel base when we wound up here – but we don't want to bother you, so if you'll let us be on our way…" He began to cross the antechamber with as confident a manner as he could muster, but then Castle pointed his gun at him, and Madrox stopped in his tracks, holding his hands up defensively. "Of course," he said abruptly, looking nervously at the depthless black of the gun's barrel, "if you want us to stay, then that's cool too."

Castle narrowed his eyes. "What are the Reds doing up there?" he asked, his cold, flinty gaze cutting through Kitty like a knife.

"They're moving troops in to level the area," Kitty said, as calmly as she could. "I saw the firepower they're bringing in, too – this place doesn't stand a chance if they use it all. They might even send some guys down here to do clean-up."

Castle smiled then, a shark's grin that almost made Kitty shudder visibly. "Let them," he snarled, the liquid nitrogen temperature of his voice dropping another ten degrees. "They want to die so bad, that's their damn problem." He advanced towards Kitty then, curiosity etching itself on his rugged features as he looked her over intently, like a platoon sergeant assessing a new recruit. "You… you can't be more than eighteen. Since when did those resistance idiots start recruiting little girls?" he asked, changing tack without batting an eyelid.

"I'm not a little girl," Kitty replied angrily, a serrated knife whirling into her hand. "I can handle myself."

"Didn't say you couldn't," Castle snorted. "Just surprised they'd let you pick up a gun, is all. Guess they must be more desperate than I thought." He glanced at the knife in her hand and pointed at it with a single fingertip. "You might want to watch how you hold those, by the way."

"Really?" Kitty asked sourly. "And why is that?" Castle didn't reply, but instead advanced on her in the blink of an eye. In an instant, he had ducked inside her guard, torn the knife from her grasp, and pushed it up against her throat.

"That's why," he snarled abruptly, as Kitty gasped against the cold steel of her blade (and struggled not to wet herself at the same time). "Dropping your arm like that leaves you wide open to being disarmed. And the Russkies won't think twice about blowing your fucking brains out when that happens." He stepped away, threw Kitty's knife down at her feet, and shrugged nonchalantly. "Just some friendly advice, kid. Take it or leave it."

Kitty knelt to pick up her knife, rubbing at her throat and giving Castle a searing glare. "Asshole," she muttered acidly, slotting her blade back into her bandolier after wiping a few stray specks of her own blood onto her fatigues. Castle nodded.

"Yeah," he said simply, walking to the wall opposite him and taking down another rifle, picking up a greasy rag and starting to polish the weapon's barrel with it. "So?"

Madrox whistled quietly. "Well, this is cheery," he said. "Anybody want to play charades?" Neither Kitty nor Castle said anything – Kitty was too busy staring daggers at Castle, while Castle was busily engrossed in cleaning his rifle – so Jamie shrugged and walked over towards another area of the chamber, where a collection of ragged-edged photographs lay in a carved wooden box. Reaching out with a gloved hand, Jamie picked out one of a blonde woman flanked by two smiling children. With them was a younger, happier-looking Castle, whose face was free of scars and pain. Jamie guessed that this was the family that the Soviets had murdered, who Castle had sworn to avenge in the worst way he could – even SAFN had mentioned the circumstances of the Punisher's initial appearances (although they had of course stated that Castle's family were victims of vile, amoral rebel activity, and had died despite the best efforts of the heroic Soviet troops).

Suddenly, a rumbling noise shook the chamber, pieces of plaster and mortar raining from the ceiling and pitter-pattering into the oily puddles on the floor. Madrox dropped the photograph back into its box as he, Kitty, and Castle all tensed instinctively, glancing about them to try and ascertain what had just happened.

Castle tipped his head to one side slightly, squinting, and when the rumbling sounded again, he said "That's not artillery. That's not even gunfire."  
"Well, what the fuck is it, then?" Kitty demanded, nervously ejecting the magazine from her pistol and then slapping it back in with a quick, practiced movement. She chambered a round and then looked around the chamber for a moment or so, as if she were trying to pick out targets from thin air.

And then, for the second time that evening, Kitty's world exploded into pain and confusion as a section of wall was ripped away in a shower of brick dust and shrieking, tortured metal. Behind the dust cloud that had been stirred up by the shattering tunnel wall, a huge, muscular shape was lurking – for a moment, Kitty thought it was the metal monster who had attacked her earlier that evening, but then two long, metallic tentacles snaked through the gloom and coiled around Castle's waist, lifting him high off the ground in the process. Screaming wordlessly, Castle pressed the trigger on his rifle and sent a spray of lethal hollow-point ammunition shrieking towards the gigantic shape. As the bullets hit, the shape staggered for a moment, emerging from the dust cloud and revealing itself, even as it dropped Castle to the ground in an ungainly heap. Kitty gasped involuntarily as she realised that what was in front of her was the Soviets' super-weapon, Omega Red – apparently the Ivans were so intent on demolishing this whole neighbourhood that they were using their pet wrecking ball as a clean-up measure.

_Christ, I need a cigarette…_


	3. Courage And Sacrifice

Kitty Pryde stumbled backwards as the monster known as Omega Red stomped towards her, holding Frank Castle aloft in one of its metal tentacles. Castle was being tossed about like a rag-doll, his rifle still spraying bullets everywhere and sending them ricocheting crazily around the large chamber, bouncing off old brickwork and embedding themselves deep into the concrete floor. There was a loud click as the rifle cycled dry and its hammer slammed down on an empty chamber. Screaming with frustration and fury, Castle up-ended the gun, grasped its still-smoking barrel, and clubbed Omega Red across the face with it, enraged. Omega Red's face was swung to the side by the blow, blood fountaining from a torn lip, but then he turned his visage back towards the man in his grasp, his leering expression saying more than anything he could have said aloud.

From the monster's bloodied facial expression, it seemed that he'd lost his patience with the annoying insects facing him – and that impression was confirmed with what he did next. The tentacle from his right wrist still coiled around Castle's waist, Omega Red then extended the coil on his other wrist and wrapped it around the man's neck. Kitty screamed as she heard the grisly, squelching crack of vertebrae being pulped, and then she froze, watching Omega Red toss Castle's twitching corpse away like a broken toy as if it were happening in slow motion. She watched the hulking beast-man survey his handiwork, and then began scrambling away as he began to advance on where she was standing. Kitty didn't know why she was so scared – after all, she'd killed men herself, in virtually the same way, so it made no sense for her to be so frightened – but she did know that she couldn't move. She was paralysed by her fear, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an onrushing juggernaut. She watched as Omega Red towered above her, his bloodstained smile widening as he looked her over like a piece of meat on a butcher's slab.

And then the same tentacle that had killed Castle wrapped itself around her neck, fresh blood leaving streaked marks on her skin. Kitty closed her tear-filled eyes and waited to hear her spine snap…

… but it never did. When sounds of shouting and punching filled the air, Kitty opened her eyes – to see a dozen or so Madrox dupes attacking Omega Red with fists and feet, kicking and striking at his few vulnerable areas as hard as they could – hard enough to make the monster let go of Kitty and drop her roughly to the floor while he turned his attention to the new threat in front of him. "Run!" the closest Madrox to her shouted. "We'll be right behind you!" The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Omega Red lashed out with the boot of one powerful leg and kicked his head clear from his shoulders. Blood and brain matter splattered the slimy floor of the sewer as the smashed skull hit the side of the chamber, and as it did so, the rest of the Madroxes staggered, clutching their heads in sympathetic agony. Kitty realised what Madrox was trying to do and steeled her nerve. She had to make this chance count. Picking herself up from the floor and reaching for the dagger on one hip, she reversed it in her hand, spinning it expertly so that she had a good grip on it. Then she hurled it as hard as she could, the blade singing through the fetid, stinking air until it sank into one of Omega Red's eye sockets with a gristly  _thunk_. The monster roared as one of its hands fumbled for the blade, tearing it free in a shower of ruined eye tissue. The army of Madroxes, seeing their newly-given advantage, decided to press it home as quickly as possible. Twenty of them charged, barrelling into the monster's huge body as hard as they could – but still they only just managed to bring the beast to its knees.

That was enough, though, for one last Madrox to unholster a heavy-calibre sidearm from his belt, shove it into the creature's bloody eye socket, and empty the magazine in one smooth motion. Ordinarily, bullets wouldn't have done much against this creature – Kitty knew that from seeing the news footage of its Soviet-sanctioned massacres – but when they were directed right into its dull brain, they were devastating. The monster swayed for a moment or two, its ruined skull still not registering the fact that it was dead, and then it crashed to the ground, the impact of its body echoing around the chamber for at least five minutes afterwards.

By that time, though, Madrox and Kitty were long gone, leaving the two bodies behind for the rats to chew on. Kitty grimaced as she saw several of them skittering along the tunnel past her boots, as if they smelled the fresh new meat that had been deposited for them, and kicked out at them angrily. "Fucking rats," she muttered, before looking up at Madrox's unusually grim expression and saying "Well, where are we going now? Shouldn't we try and find Logan?"

Madrox shook his head. "Not now, kid. Now, we're gonna go for a drink…"

Kitty was too dumbstruck to do anything but follow Madrox as he walked confidently down the tunnel, towards a spot where thready wisps of light were streaming down through a manhole cover.

* * *

 

Logan grunted as the pain began to subside – not by much, but by a little, and for that he would be forever grateful. The physical damage that Bobby Drake and Colonel Braddock had inflicted on him was long since healed, that much was evident, but the psychological damage had been far less quick to disappear. Logan could still feel the mind-witch's spidery touch clawing its way through his mind, destroying whatever it came across in its remorseless search for information. He could still feel her sucking the information she desired from his brain, without his being able to do anything about it. And when she had finished, she had thrown his bleeding, battered body back into this small cell. Flaking brown stains on the floor and walls marked where Logan had lain after the torture session had ended, still smeared with his own blood. The simple, functional clothes he was wearing now were also stiff with his own gore, and he could almost feel his brain sloshing around in his skull like it had been liquidised. He sat up, ignoring the firestorm of pain that that brought, and spat a phlegm-laced wad of spittle into the bucket set in the corner of his cell, hearing it hit the tin bottom with a feeble echoing sound. He figured it had to have been at least two hours since his interrogation, and he wondered how long his accelerated healing was going to take before it fixed everything that had been done to him.

He also wondered how long it would take Elisabeth Braddock to paint the city red with rebel blood, after she used what she had learned earlier. Even from his cell up here in the upper reaches of the tower the Reds had commandeered as a command headquarters, he could still hear the rumbling of the tanks and armoured vehicles as they churned more of the Big Apple's streets into gravel. He didn't know why they were still keeping him alive, but he didn't think it was going to be very enjoyable, whatever it was.

Just then, the door to his cell swung open noiselessly, and stood in front of him was what Logan could only describe as a demon. He wasn't a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but the creature before him defied description by any other means. Lithe and wiry, with a long pointed tail curving out from behind his inhumanly-flexible frame, and a sulphurous stench clinging to his Red Army uniform and indigo fur, the creature regarded Logan curiously, his featureless yellow eyes taking in every detail of the prisoner before he spoke.

"Guten tag," he said in a heavily-accented voice. "I am Lieutenant Wagner. Please, follow me."

"Why should I, bub?" Logan growled, trying to sound as defiant as he could – which to be frank, wasn't very much. "Why don't you just kill me?" The demon-creature shrugged.

"It is not my place. You are being relocated to a more secure facility, where you will work for the Revolution in a more productive manner," he said. "Colonel Braddock feels that you will be of more use there, and that is why you have not been executed yet." Then the demonic man smiled, making Logan shudder, and unholstered a snub-nosed pistol in order to point it right at his head. "Rest assured, little American, you will not escape back to your rebel friends any time soon…"

* * *

 

Kitty tried to hide her disbelief as Madrox led her towards a squat, dingy-looking bar with a flickering neon sign attached to its front, which advertised the fact that there were naked girls inside. Then she decided that hiding it wasn't worth the effort and pulled away from Madrox, folding her arms and standing stock-still. "I don't believe this," she said acidly. "Your leader's being held captive by the Russkies and all you can think to do is go to a titty bar?" She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Fucking East Coasters!" she cried, anger giving her words an ugly edge, like a serrated knife.

In response, Madrox simply turned to face her, and said, in an uncharacteristically cold tone, "I'm only gonna say this once, kid, because I completely suck at getting angry: shut the fuck up, okay? I know what I'm doing." He gestured at the sparking sign with an extended thumb, and said "This is Logan's favourite bar – he comes here for information about the Russkies, as well as to pay for a lap dance now and again. I'm hoping that one of his regular informers is here tonight so I can maybe get us a lead on where he's gone. So just let me do the talking, all right?"

Chastened ever so slightly, Kitty nodded, and let Madrox walk towards and open the door of the bar, letting the unpleasantly humid atmosphere inside waft out for a moment or two. Kitty coughed, but followed Madrox in anyway. The bar was as downmarket inside as it had appeared from the outside, smoky and crowded with drinkers clustered around a dirty bar and whooping lustfully while a naked, green-haired girl, her lithe, supple body decorated with iridescent paints that shimmered in the low light, writhed with practised, detached passion on a raised podium at the other end of the room. Kitty turned her eyes away from the podium and concentrated on following Madrox to the bar, elbowing a patron in the face for touching her on the backside as she did so. His nose broke with a wet crunch, and he screeched with pain and clamped a hand over his face as blood gushed from it. Nobody took any notice as he staggered out of the door – not even the bartender – making Kitty wonder how just often they saw things like that happen.

Madrox pushed his way to the bar and held his hand up, making sure to let the bartender see the ten-rouble bill he had slotted between his index and second fingers. Sure enough, that brought the burly man over extremely quickly, and Madrox used that to his advantage just as quickly. "Hi," he said. "Word has it this place is a good place to get information about the Russkies." He slipped the bill into the other man's hand with subtle ease, and then the bartender gestured subtly over to a table in the corner.

"She'll be with you in a few minutes," he said. "She's gotta finish her dance first."

Kitty blinked, before jerking a thumb at the dancer who was currently wrapping herself energetically around a metal pole, leaving it slick with sweat and paint as she ground her hips against it. "Wait, wait…  _she's_  the informer?"

Madrox nodded. "So Logan told me. She hears a lot when the Russkies are through having their fun with her." Kitty shuddered. She knew exactly what Madrox meant, and although she had used sex as a way of getting effective information before as well, she'd only done it relatively rarely. To do it regularly, and to do it by choice, made her wonder how the dancer coped at all. Still, she supposed she would find out soon enough, so she asked the bartender for a glass of Kentucky bourbon (a drink she'd acquired a taste for since it had been outlawed and largely replaced by Siberian vodka) and a handful of whatever food they could offer – which turned out to be elderly, tough pork rinds that Kitty could barely manage to bite through (Kitty's Jewish roots had initially balked at eating food that wasn't kosher, but when the choice had become "eat it or starve", Kitty had decided that Yahweh wouldn't really mind if she ate pork meat after all, and in the end had gained quite a liking for it). Chewing her way through the pork rinds as fast as she could, Kitty sipped her drink while Madrox threw back the beer that he'd ordered in quick gulps. "Nice place, huh?" he said between swallows.

"No," Kitty replied flatly, sipping her bourbon. "It's a fucking dump."

Madrox opened his mouth to refute her claim, and then nodded in defeat. "Yeah, you're absolutely right."

Kitty felt a stab of triumph at that, and fished her cigarettes out of her pocket before lighting one and taking a satisfied drag. Maybe, if she was very lucky, she'd get to finish her smoke this time.

Her hopes for that quickly hit a brick wall, though, as Madrox, suddenly irritable, asked "Do you have to do that right now? It's nasty enough in here already without you adding to it, so could you –" Ignoring his request, Kitty simply exhaled a lungful of smoke directly into Madrox's face, making him cough and splutter momentarily. He shot her an annoyed look and rolled his watering eyes. "I guess not," he said, as Kitty took another deep draw and stretched like a cat, letting her tired muscles free themselves from the knots they'd tied themselves in. She enjoyed the silence as Madrox sat with his arms folded, drinking his beer and trying to ignore her as she smoked. Finally, when she'd stubbed out the butt in the overflowing ashtray on the table, Madrox said "You finished now?"

Kitty laughed. "Yup. First good smoke of the day, too." Then, she noticed the green-haired girl walking over to where they were sitting, and said "You better put your game face on, James – your informer's on her way over."

Madrox turned in his seat so that he could see their visitor, and Kitty would later swear blind that his tongue flopped out of his head when he did so. Clad in a tight-fitting silken replica of a Russian Army uniform that showed off all the right curves, the dancer sashayed towards their table with all the easy grace and poise of someone who knew exactly how to manipulate her audience to her greatest advantage. "Hi there," she said to Madrox, in a honeyed, musical voice that even Kitty had to admit sounded irresistible. "The boss tells me you wanted to see me?" Then, she glanced at Kitty, and continued "If you want me to include her, it'll be twenty roubles an hour more. I don't do couples very often." She smiled salaciously in Kitty's direction, licking her green-painted lips as she did so. "Or do you just want to watch? I'm sure she and I could have  _lots_  of fun…"

Madrox swallowed, then shook his head. "Um… I ain't here for that," he said firmly (but with great difficulty too, Kitty noticed). "I… I need some information. About the Russkies." Instantly, the girl's demeanour changed, her expression hardening noticeably, and she sat down and reluctantly folded her hands together on the table's sticky surface.

"You…  _do_  know I don't do that for free, don't you?" she said, holding out one manicured hand and rubbing the thumb and index finger together. "I don't exactly do this for my health, buddy." Madrox fished out another tight bundle of notes and tossed them onto the table in front of him. The girl smiled broadly and gathered them up, folding them into a neat wad and sliding them into her costume's breast pocket. "Pleasure doing business with you," she said, winking. "So what did you want to know?"

"A… friend of ours got captured by the Russkies tonight. We need to know where they'd take high-profile prisoners like him, and we need to know quickly."

The girl stroked her chin thoughtfully for a moment or two, before gesturing out of the grimy window behind her. "Depends," she said finally. "If they want to interrogate them, they'll take them to the Empire State Building – plenty of Russkie prisoners go there on a daily basis, and not all of them come back out." She paused, running her hands through her mane of green hair. "On the other hand, if the Ivans just want to work them into an early grave, they'll just take them to the gulag in New Jersey. From what I've heard, that's the most likely place you'll find your… friend." Then the girl paused, smirking. "You know, Jim always told me you were a stupid bastard, Madrox, but I didn't know you were this dumb."

"I… I don't know what you mean," Madrox said, trying desperately to sound as if he was genuinely ignorant of who she was talking about, but the girl looked like she wasn't buying it for an instant.

"Come on, man, don't try and play innocent with me," she said. "I heard enough from one of my dumber Russkie regulars tonight to know that Jim's been captured, and I remembered enough about what Jim's told me about you to put two and two together. Look, honey – I might be a stripper, but I'm not an idiot."

Madrox nodded, resigned to his new circumstances. "Logan told me you were like this," he said, slugging back another mouthful of beer.

The girl laughed, and tweaked Madrox's chin between a forefinger and thumb almost affectionately. "I'll just bet he did – Jim said that was what he liked most about me." Then her expression turned a little more serious, and she continued "If you're going to try to rescue Jim… be careful. The Russkies shipped in a lot of superhuman soldiers from Europe to guard the gulag, and the Empire State is crawling with the bastards, too. One wrong step and they'll barbecue your ass."

"Yeah, we already ran into Omega Red today," Kitty said, finally breaking her silence. "We killed that bastard stone-cold dead, too." The way she was speaking the words went completely against the way she'd felt when the events had actually been occurring, sure, but she figured the dancer didn't need to know that. She made sure to savour the other woman's shocked expression for as long as she could before continuing "We can handle anything the Ivans throw at us – right, Jamie?"

Madrox shrugged. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, kid." Then he turned back towards the dancer and said "You wouldn't happen to know if any other rebel units are close by here, would you?"

The dancer shot him a disbelieving look then, as if she couldn't comprehend what she was hearing. "You tell me, man – you're the one fighting the Ivans, not me." Then she rubbed her brow and sighed. "All right. Last I heard, there were still some rebel divisions reported in Red Hook somewhere, but I don't know if they're still around. That's the best I can do."

"Then it'll have to do," Madrox said, with a lot more determination than Kitty had heard from him in all the time she'd known him. He nodded to Kitty. "Come on, kid. We got a party to organise…"


	4. Hammer And Sickle

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock looked out over the darkness-shrouded city of New York from the safety of her office on the top level of the Empire State Building, and felt a thin, cruel smile involuntarily crease her lips. She could see fires raging through several parts of the city, fires that were the last remnants of her troops' assaults on numerous nests of the rebellious Yankee filth who insisted on resisting the Soviet liberators. She relished the thought that soon she would not be forced to keep slamming her heel down on the people of New York, thanks to the information she had prised out of the mind of the hairy animal called Jim Logan. In his brain had been detailed layouts for rebel bases, supply routes, safe houses and more – enough to cripple the city's rebel movement for good. Proudly she watched huge columns of armour and men pouring forth onto the streets of the city from the fortress established around the base of the Empire State, and relished the thought of seeing her troops in action against the remains of the New York rebel movement – and from there, moving across the country and breaking the back of every last underground resistance cell that had dared oppose the liberating forces of the Revolution.

She lowered her eyes then, and turned back towards her desk, where more mundane matters waited. For now, unfortunately, she had other matters to attend to than bloody, glorious conquest. The proletariat of New York needed bread, and she had to provide it. To that end, she had had two divisions of the Red Army establish soup kitchens in several key locations, which served repulsive-but-edible borscht and other cheap meals that could be paid for with a just few roubles. She had seen the positive results herself, as filthy New Yorkers had shuffled past a table beset with a large cauldron of soup, thankful for any scraps the Red Army could give them. Even their thoughts showed that they were happy – Elisabeth's telepathy had made sure of that. If they did not feel instantly grateful themselves, she had changed their minds for them. It was a minor procedure, after all, and Elisabeth had done it many, many times before during interrogations. She had been tempted to make the stunted Logan over into a weapon for the Red Army using such a technique, but she decided that using such a dangerously loose cannon would do more harm than good in the long run. So, instead, she had psionically beaten him to within an inch of his wretched life and made sure that he would not be a threat for as long as she could. And since he was being taken to the gulag at that point, she saw no further point in wasting thoughts on him. Returning her attention to the forms and papers on her desk, she signed each of them with a tired flourish, instantly condemning another hundred wretched prisoners to death, sending another few tonnes of food to Siberian Cossack commandoes currently occupying Queens, and redeploying a detachment of tanks to Montana in order to shore up the Soviet line. It was dull, it was boring, and it made Elisabeth long for the days when she had been a field soldier. She remembered being inducted into the Red Army as a young girl and earning her first kill during an assault on South American supporters of democracy (in fact, her right forearm still showed the faded, crude kill-tally scars that she had gouged there herself, during and even following each mission). After that, her rise to the rank of Comrade-Colonel had been unstoppable, as she displayed an uncanny knack for leadership and an instinctive grasp of battlefield tactics. And now she was here, seeing over the occupation of a decaying metropolis that held nothing for her but scattered, messy guerrilla conflict. It bored her, frankly, and she often found herself longing to pick up a rifle and bayonet and join her troops on the ground, but she knew she could not. So instead she signed away her life and let others take the glory.

The Revolution demanded it, she supposed. It wasn't an ideal state of affairs by any means, but she knew for a fact that victory would not be achieved without sacrifice.

Just then, she heard a cautious knock at the door, and, grateful for the interruption, she said "Come in." The door opened slowly, and Corporal Robert Drake stepped through into the plushly-decorated office with a stack of documents under his arm. Raising his free hand to his brow, he snapped off a parade ground-standard salute.

"Long live the Revolution," he said, keeping his eyes looking straight ahead.

"Long live the Revolution," Elisabeth replied. "At ease, Comrade Drake." At that, the young man relaxed visibly, and his gaze focused directly on her for the first time. "What do you have to report?"

"Bad news, Comrade-Colonel," Drake said, holding up the stack of documents. "It seems that the Omega Red weapon has been permanently disabled – clean-up crews found his body in the sewers earlier today. He was –"

Colonel Braddock held up a hand. "Spare me the gory details, Comrade Drake. Do we have any adequate superhuman replacements for him?"

"Well," Drake began, "one Lieutenant Piotr Rasputin has expressed his desire to step into Omega Red's shoes, Comrade-Colonel. You witnessed his suitability for such a role earlier today, I believe?"

"Yes," Colonel Braddock replied, another thin smile passing over her face as inspiration suddenly struck her like a bolt of lightning. "Yes, I did." She folded her hands into one another on the surface of her desk and then sat back in her chair, mulling a thought over in her head for a moment or two. "Have Comrade Rasputin deployed into the centre of the city without any further delay. I want him at the head of every counter-offensive we mount against the rebel scum. I suspect he will be a fine figurehead for the Red Army, don't you?"

"Absolutely," Drake agreed, a vicious light beginning to shine in his eyes. "It'll be my first priority." He saluted, clicked his heels together precisely, and then turned on one heel and began to move towards the door with long, even strides.

"Before you do that, however," Elisabeth said, causing him to pause in mid-step and look round uncertainly, "make sure that he has been fitted with the tendrils that I presume have been recovered from Omega Red's body. They have proven effective in close combat, and I would hate to see them go to waste. Give Comrade Rasputin adequate time to practise with them, and then make sure he is deployed to a visible location. I want the Yankees to see that they cannot vanquish the Soviet Union so easily."

Drake nodded. "Yes, Comrade-Colonel." Then he inclined his head forwards slightly, as if he was unsure of whether he should stay or not. Elisabeth nodded towards the door of her office, in answer to his silent query.

"Dismissed, Comrade Drake," she said. "Bring me good news next time." When Drake had disappeared, Elisabeth buried her head in her hands, exasperated, before she let loose a howl of frustration and swept a pile of document folders noisily onto the floor in a moment of white-hot anger. She had been counting on Omega Red to be a key player in the crushing of the New York rebel network, and now he was nothing more than cold meat on a slab. She loathed having to rethink her plans – it meant that she had failed, and she hated failure intensely. Still, she reasoned, she could either wallow in her failure, or she could learn from it and make sure she never did anything like that again. The latter option seemed infinitely preferable.

Before she did that, though, she decided that she needed something to take her mind off the situation that had just been presented to her. Closing her eyes, she sent a telepathic order to one of the lackeys that were crawling through the building like lice on a mangy dog.  _Bring me amusement,_  she stated simply.  _I wish to relax for an hour or two._ While her subordinates scurried away to find her something to attract her attention, she busied herself with more paperwork, wondering who – or what – they would bring her.

It took fifteen minutes for them to knock on her door. Elisabeth had sensed a pack of them dithering outside, wringing their hands and wondering whether or not to rap their hand against the door's oaken surface, so she had given them a slight telepathic nudge in order to let them know that she was not going to send them on a one-way trip to Alaska for disturbing her. When they bucked up the courage to enter her office, Elisabeth saw the uniformed soldiers had brought with them a manacled and chained prisoner with a power-dampening collar clamped around his neck. His blond hair was matted with dirt, and from the way his prison uniform hung on his frame, his body was obviously suffering from an early-to-middling stage of malnutrition. Still, Elisabeth liked the restless spark of defiance she could sense in his mind. It…  _aroused_  her. Walking over to where the man was standing flanked by her underlings, she took his stubbly chin in between the forefinger and thumb of her right hand, and glanced toward the nearest soldier, a thuggish-looking man with close-cropped black hair, a gruesome web of scars covering the right side of his face, and a nose that looked to have been broken and clumsily reset dozens of times.

"What is this one's name, Private…" She squinted at the name sewn onto the soldier's uniform. "Private Wisdom?"

"This, Comrade-Colonel, is Alex Summers," Wisdom said, a contempt-fuelled sneer crinkling the mass of scar tissue that obscured most of his face. "We've had this one in custody for  _years_  – he led a resistance cell in New Jersey, but it didn't last very long. Guess the guy just wasn't a very good leader." The words seemed to slither off Wisdom's tongue, as if they were calculated to sting the Summers man as much as they possibly could. Elisabeth liked that. She stepped forwards and stroked the prisoner's face with the back of her hand. He flinched slightly, as if he was expecting another beating, but she didn't want to inflict more pain on him just yet. No, she had other plans…

"Leave us," she said in a clipped, formal tone, and after a moment's hesitation, the four soldiers withdrew without a word. When they had gone, Elisabeth drew herself closer to the man called Alex Summers and let herself bask in the bubbling anger radiating from his mind. Oh, this would be  _so_  much fun. "Do you know why you're here, Mr Summers?" she asked conversationally, letting her right hand trail down his stomach to his groin. Her spider-light touches did exactly as they were intended to do, and she smiled at his conflicted expression. Still, he didn't answer her right away, so she decided he needed some prompting. With her left hand, she slapped him sharply across the face. "Answer me, please. Do you know why you're here?"

Alex Summers did nothing except spit in her face. Elisabeth felt the bloody spittle hit her cheek, and wiped it off without a word. "I know why I'm here, murderer," Alex said. His voice sounded as if he'd been gargling with cut glass for a week, and Elisabeth supposed that had something to do with the jagged scars criss-crossing his vocal cords. "You're going to kill me because you're bored, aren't you?"

Elisabeth let a smile play across her lips. This was turning out better than she had anticipated. She liked it when prey struggled. "Oh, I'm afraid the soldiers have been filling your head with lies and deceit. I'm not going to kill you, you silly boy. No, I want to do something  _far_  more fun." She leaned in closer and kissed him on the mouth when he wasn't expecting it, slipping her tongue gently between his lips, and she was gratified that he did not pull away as quickly as she'd thought he might. He even leaned into it a little before he drew back, disgust and revulsion flooding through his mind. Spitting again, as if to get the strawberry-shortcake taste of her lips out of his mouth, he glared at her with admirable strength – admirable because even after all that the gulag had done to him, he still had strength of mind enough to let her see that she didn't own him.

That would change soon enough, she decided. Sliding her hands through his unruly blond hair, she gazed deeply into his eyes and drew closer to his face, close enough to smell the scent of his sweat and the delicate tang of his anger. "Don't resist, Mr Summers," she whispered. "I don't like it when people don't do as they're told."

"Fuck you." Alex Summers' voice was still defiant, like a harp string drawn taut. Elisabeth smiled again, as if he had just proclaimed her to be his new god.

"Precisely what I had in mind," she chuckled coldly. Nodding towards him almost casually, she sent a psionic pulse screaming down his synapses, driving him to his knees. She could tell that his limbs had been so overcome by the pulse that he had no control over them for the moment – which she regretted, but she imagined that control would return once his barriers had been thoroughly shattered. As he lay crumpled on the floor, she sank to her knees as well, and took his face between finger and thumb again. "Now do you see why it's easier for me to win?" she asked, like a schoolteacher admonishing an errant pupil. Alex Summers tried to slur a curse at her, but all he managed was a spittle-choked gurgle. "Good boy," she replied, and drew him as upright as she could before she kissed him again, parting his lips with her tongue once more. There was less resistance this time, and by that simple gesture, Elisabeth knew she had him. It would take a little longer before he moaned her name unbidden, that was certain, but she had him nevertheless, and she knew that she would enjoy his company until then. "Good boy."

* * *

Elisabeth stood on her balcony, letting the chill evening wind blow through her unfettered hair. She still had not bound it back up after finishing with the Summers man, and had decided instead to leave it free for a while, just for a change. Not that that was based on any sentimental recollection of her recent conquest, of course – she had simply watched, impassive, as he had begged her not to let him go back to the gulag when the soldiers had arrived – begged her with every fibre of his being to let him stay with her. The sounds of his screams had echoed down the corridor outside her office for several minutes, ending abruptly when Elisabeth had heard one of her soldiers drive his rifle butt into the man's face quickly. A shame, she decided. Not a great shame, but a shame nonetheless. She had enjoyed the prisoner's company – he had been a great pleasure to subdue – and it was unfortunate that she would not be able to do it to him again.

Still, as she had so often learned, sacrifices had to be made. And sacrificing Alex Summers to a lifetime of back-breaking hard labour wasn't exactly a hard one to make. He had disobeyed Soviet law, and for that he had to be punished. Elisabeth could think of no better punishment than to let him see a glimpse of what he could have had if he hadn't been so utterly stupid, and then snatch it all away. He'd be berating himself for the rest of his short, painful existence, and that, she knew, would be worse than anything the Soviet soldiers could inflict on him. Self-inflicted pain was always worse, after all, because you knew all of your own weak spots instinctively, and Alex Summers would be forever regretting not being able to touch her body again. That was the worst punishment of all.

Before Elisabeth could think on that subject further, however, a sharp knock sounded at the entrance to her office, forcing her to confront the busy realities of her position. Hurriedly tying her hair up into a hasty ponytail, Elisabeth said "Come in," as she sat down at her desk and picked up a pen in order to look at least partially busy. The oak doors opened a fraction and through them slipped a statuesque young woman, who was clad in an ankle-length black greatcoat and carried a black peaked cap under one arm. She had tooth mark-like scars around the edge of her flame-red hairline, and Elisabeth knew that these were the result of having her hair burned away in a fire less than two years before. The hair had been restored by Soviet surgeons, but the scars remained. This, Elisabeth had instantly realised, was KGB intelligence's best interrogator. This was Major Jean Grey.

"Good afternoon, Comrade Braddock," Major Grey said, in an oddly sweet-sounding voice that was completely at odds with her severe demeanour. Despite her inferior rank, she still radiated an air of authority that made Elisabeth wince inwardly. She had never liked the KGB – she thought they were all sneaky bastards who ought to have been shot at birth. "I have been informed that you are currently holding an important rebel leader?"

"He is on his way to the local gulag, Comrade Grey, but yes, we have him," Elisabeth replied in a clipped, businesslike tone. "I and a subordinate have already interrogated him. He has provided us with all the information we need – we are currently in the process of deploying troops to crush the rebels, using the details I obtained from his mind."

Major Grey held up a hand to silence her. "Do not presume to tell me that you have taken all you can from this prisoner's mind, Colonel. There are ways and means to gain even the smallest scraps,  _if_  you know how to get to them. Now – return him to me, and we will see if you truly have taken everything you can from him."

Elisabeth fought to keep her teeth from grinding together. This was something she did  _not_  need. She didn't like having her authority questioned – especially not by a black-coated ghoul from the KGB. Still, she knew exactly what happened to people who didn't do as the KGB told them, and even she wouldn't be exempt from that – it wouldn't be the first time that somebody in her position had been dragged kicking and screaming to Alaska, after all. "Very well," she said, trying to stop herself from leaping across her desk and jamming her fist down Major Grey's smugly-smiling throat. "I will have him recalled from the gulag and brought directly to you."

"Good," Major Grey replied icily, just as the doors to Elisabeth's office creaked open again, and her adjutant Lieutenant Drake stumbled hastily inside, as if he had only just realised who was with his superior officer. Major Grey noticed his fumbled entry, and gestured towards him with a gloved hand. "Do you… normally let the rank and file do that?"

"This is Comrade Drake," Elisabeth replied, rubbing her brow tiredly. "He's my assistant."

"I'd have him reprimanded for that, if I were you," Major Grey suggested helpfully. "Perhaps a few hours cleaning out the troops' latrines would help him keep time better." She made sure to give Lieutenant Drake a scathing glare while she spoke, from which he cringed like a beaten dog. Satisfied she had made her point, Major Grey turned back towards Elisabeth and sat back in her chair. "May I wait here while you bring me the prisoner?"

Elisabeth felt her fists clenching. "Certainly," she said with a great deal of difficulty, before she reached into a cabinet behind her and drew out a crystal decanter and two glasses. Perhaps some alcohol would soothe her nerves, she wondered. "Would you like a glass of vodka?"

Major Grey's face creased into a sincere-looking smile for the first time since she had elbowed her way into Elisabeth's office. "Yes, thank you. That would be  _divine…_ "


	5. Hook, Line And Sinker

Kitty Pryde sat beside Jamie Madrox as the converted pick-up truck they were riding in drove along the rails of a deserted subway tunnel, trying not to let the creeping rats and cockroaches get to her. She wasn't very happy about being underground again after what had happened with Omega Red and Frank Castle, but as Madrox had told her, this was the safest way to get to Brooklyn – and judging by the brutish gunner in front of them, who was manning a pair of twin-linked machine-guns, that seemed like a pretty accurate assessment. The gunner looked over to where they were sitting briefly, swinging the perforated muzzles of his weapons with him as he did so. Kitty fought the urge to flinch as their blank, deadly gaze passed over her, and the gunner laughed.

"Fear not, dear lady – Hank McCoy shall not soil your beauteous features with the ugly kiss of lead!" he said, before baring his sleeve and showing her the crude tattoo on his bicep that indicated he'd been top of his class as a marksman. "I have a very good eye for who I'm supposed to be shooting at," he added, winking at her, "and I certainly would think twice about shooting in your direction. Your companion, on the other hand…"

Madrox stuck up a middle finger abruptly. "Yeah, yeah, McCoy. Give it a rest already – you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a nuke."

"Don't flatter yourself, Madrox – your evasive skills aren't all that good either, you know," McCoy chuckled, winking at Kitty before turning back to sweep the tunnel ahead of him with his guns. "One wonders how you've survived this long…"

"By being better lookin' than you," Madrox shot back, his grimy face lightening up a little. Then, as if on cue, the driver of the car shouted that they were coming up to their destination and Madrox breathed an audible sigh of relief as they pulled into the disused subway station. As the truck slowed to a halt, Madrox and Kitty jumped down onto the crumbling concrete platform and took stock of their new surroundings. "So this is Brooklyn, huh?" Kitty said, her hands planted squarely on her hips. She whistled in disbelief as she glanced around at the rotting posters that clung to the subway platform's walls, and saw the old platform signs vomiting occasional showers of sparks onto the ground as the lights set into the ceiling sputtered and threatened to die.

"Indeed so," McCoy said. "It's not much, but it's home."

"Ain't that the truth," said the driver of the truck. She was a hard-bitten woman who seemed to be of Puerto Rican extraction, her chest criss-crossed by gun belts and a couple of pistols hanging low at her waist. Paradoxically, Kitty could also see a looted Soviet first-aid kit strapped to her back, along with a pouch filled with what looked like almost obsessively-maintained surgical tools, their gleaming edges shining in the half-light of the platform. She stuck out her hand, which Kitty and then Madrox both shook in turn. "Cecilia Reyes – chief medical advisor to the Brooklyn rebel movement." She paused again, a sardonic smile crossing her lips for a moment or two. "For what it's worth, anyway. So what brings you out here?"

"Reds caught one of our senior guys," Madrox explained. "They're holding him in the Empire State, and we need some big muscle to break him out."

"You…  _are_  kidding, right?" McCoy asked, scratching his stubbly chin with one massive hand and adjusting the blood-stained bandanna tied around his forehead a little with the other. "The Empire State's a fortress. The Soviets have that place locked down tighter than any other installation in this city. It's almost impossible to break  _out_  – trying to break  _in_  is worse than suicide."

"He's right, man," Cecilia said. "I've lost count of the number of times I had to stitch guys back together thanks to that place. Your friend's in that sinkhole, you might as well kiss his ass goodbye right now."

"Can't do that," Kitty replied, shaking her head. "From what I hear, Jim Logan's got the layout of every rebel base in the city in his head – if the Ivans have that information, we're all as good as dead."

"Logan?" Cecilia repeated, her brows knitting together in confusion. "They've got Logan? How'd they manage that?"

"One of their superhumans knocked a building down on his head," Madrox replied flatly, his fists clenching. "Last I saw, the big armoured freak cost us Summers, Blaire, Watson, and who knows who else when they caught Logan and one of my dupes."

"Scott's… Scott's dead?" McCoy put both hands to his forehead in disbelief. "Are you sure?"

"No, but I'm willing to bet that a few tonnes of concrete falling on him won't have done him much good, either," Madrox snapped, his voice going taut as piano wire. "Look, man, I'd have gone back to help him, but there were dozens of Ivans with tanks and artillery following that monster. What do you think I was gonna do? Stand around and let myself get captured?" He paused and took a deep breath before gripping the larger man's shoulder firmly. "I miss him too, Hank, but this is war. People die in war – you know that. Scott knew that, too. Don't let him have died in vain." The big man took a shuddering breath, wiped at his eyes with a couple of thick fingers, and then drew himself up to his full height.

"All right," he said, taking his bandanna off and running his hands through his shaggy mane of brown hair. "All right." Then he pointed down the platform a little, towards a ramshackle tunnel marked with yellow plastic signs that stated that cleaning was in progress. "That's the way to our HQ. Follow me." Before he could move, Cecilia moved to take up a position at his side, slipping her slender hand into his thick paw. As she did so, Kitty noticed a brief gleam of gold on her left hand's ring finger that corresponded with a similar glittering on the big man's own meaty left hand. She blinked and looked again, wondering if she was seeing things – and the same golden light shone back at her once more.  _Stranger things have happened, I guess,_  she thought to herself, still not quite believing it.

When she thought it was safe to speak without the two of them hearing her, she whispered urgently to Madrox "Did you know these two were married?"

"Sure I did," Madrox whispered back with a grin. "I was Hank's best man." Then he raised his voice and called out "Hey, Hank – Kitty here would like to see you and Cecilia's wedding rings!" He basked in the angry glare in which Kitty enveloped him, and gestured to her as Hank and Cecilia turned around and headed back to where Kitty was standing. As they neared her, Kitty could feel a horrible heat creeping up her face, seemingly making her sweat even in the cool air of the subway tunnel.

"I'll kill you," she hissed, as Madrox chuckled indiscreetly. "You're dead." Then she noticed that Hank and Cecilia were standing right by her, and she coughed, straightening out her crumpled fatigues a little. Inside, she wished – not for the first time – that she'd stayed in Chicago. It was a lot less headache-inducing there, she thought.

"So, Miss Kitty, you would like to see our wedding rings, would you?" Hank enquired conversationally. Kitty shook her head.

"No… uh, Hank, I… I was just surprised that the two of you were… you know… married. It just seemed a little… um… out of the ordinary, that's all."

Cecilia laughed, much to Kitty's surprised – and relief. "Oh,  _that_. We get that all the time, kid – don't worry about it." She held out her left hand so that Kitty could see the gold band encircling her ring finger. "It's beautiful, isn't it? It's a one of a kind original." She paused. "Well, two of a kind, really – Hank has the other one." As if on cue, Hank held up his left hand to show off his matching ring.

"It'll be five years next month," he said proudly. "I'm still wondering what to get Cecilia for an anniversary present – I was thinking something along the lines of a new Smith & Wesson."

Cecilia jerked her thumb in Hank's direction, one eyebrow raised. "Isn't he such a romantic?" Then her expression hardened, and she turned back towards the yawning darkness of the tunnel in front of her. "We'd better keep going – there are Russkie patrols coming down here more and more often these days. Better to be safe than dead, I think…"

* * *

As the elevator to the prison cells hummed downwards swiftly, Comrade-Colonel Elizabeth Braddock clenched her hands together inside her leather gloves, anxious to get this entire sorry business over and done with as soon as possible, while Major Grey simply cracked her own gloved knuckles and smiled with the cool detachment her position afforded her.

"I hope you know, Comrade Braddock, that I am not here to pass judgement on you today," Major Grey said, adjusting her black peaked cap a little as it sat precisely atop her tightly-bound mass of scarlet curls. "You do not have to feel as if I'm watching you personally."

"Of course not, Comrade Grey," Elisabeth said, "but you must understand how, ah,  _disconcerting_  it is for a senior KGB officer to arrive unannounced and then demand access to prisoners who I have already interrogated and judged as being of little more value."

Major Grey's smile widened. Elisabeth could sense the thinly-veiled pleasure in her thoughts as she tasted Elisabeth's own discomfort. "The KGB prides itself on arriving unannounced, Comrade Braddock. It helps us to determine who really needs our… guidance," she replied, chuckling slightly as an almost fiendish light glittered in her delicate green eyes. "Nonetheless, I only want to see this one prisoner, and then I shall be on my way. I don't wish to impose myself on your operation any more than I have to, after all."

_Good,_  Elisabeth found herself thinking sourly. Catching herself with a start, she realised that letting her thoughts run away with her around a telepath of Major Grey's calibre was a huge mistake. "Won't you want to see the results of the interrogation put into practice, Major?" she asked, perhaps a little too hastily. "I suspect that it will be something you won't want to miss, after all."

"I'll be the judge of that, Colonel," Major Grey snapped, her tone sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. Elisabeth swallowed involuntarily then, as she got just the briefest taste of the strength of Major Grey's formidable psychic abilities. They felt like a cat's claws dragging across an eyeball, or like nettles lashing bare flesh. Either way, Elisabeth found herself feeling extremely grateful that she was not the one who was going to be interrogated in a few moments' time.

"Yes… of course," she muttered quietly, as the elevator sighed to a gentle stop. The door hissed aside after a second or two, to reveal a pair of hulking armed guards, who were each holding bulky assault rifles over the chest sections of their inches-thick body armour. The underslung pump-action grenade launchers on the large rifles, and the numerous extra hollow-point ammunition packs hanging from the men's belts, spoke volumes about how necessary protection from the inmates was. When they saw Colonel Braddock, their heels clicked together reflexively as a result of frequent practice, but their minds still broadcast acrid waves of apprehension when they saw Major Grey's black greatcoat. Elisabeth highly doubted that that would happen – after all, she had hand-picked Comrades Cassidy and Maximov herself, and both were highly-decorated Red Army veterans. Both had been awarded the Order of Lenin during the siege of Warsaw in 1984, when the Poles' feeble uprising against their Soviet liberators was finally choked off for good, and both of them had proven themselves as excellent rebel hunters here in New York, with each of them claiming a dozen rebel kills within weeks of beginning their first tours of duty. She stepped forwards and saluted precisely, moving both men to salute back with fluent efficiency. "At ease, gentlemen," she said reassuringly (while she silently stimulated a slight increase in their brain's endorphin production in order to relax them a little). "You may remove your helmets, gentlemen." At her command, both men reached up to the clasps at their throats and released the catches that kept their headgear anchored to their chestplates, before securing their helmets under their arms, revealing one set of close-cropped red curls and one shock of white hair with two unusually long forelocks. Gesturing to the one on her right, Elisabeth said "Major, may I introduce –"

"No, you may not," Major Grey snapped, irritated. "I am not interested in mindless pleasantries, Colonel. Take me to the prisoner." Her eyes narrowed to burning slits. " _Now._ "

"As you wish," Elisabeth said through gritted teeth. Waving her guards aside, she pressed her hand firmly into the palm-print reader set into the wall beside the door leading to the cell block. There was a soft click as the lock cycled open and then the door swung inwards to reveal the rows of sterile, generic cells inside. Without waiting to be asked, Major Grey stepped through the door, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, taking in the scent of stale sweat and blood that permeated the air of the corridor. To her left, a blue-skinned woman sat rocking back and forth in her cell, dribbling and giggling softly to herself as her naked body remoulded itself into a different form every few seconds or so. Intrigued despite her statement only a few moments beforehand, Major Grey stepped forwards and pointed curiously at the woman with one gloved hand.

"What is this one's name?" she said.

_Oh,_ now _you want to know people's names,_  Elisabeth thought.  _Make your mind up._  "That's Raven Darkholme, Major," she said aloud. "We found her in Eastern Europe, ferrying guns to the rebels there. She was using her shape-shifting powers to avoid detection from everything but our telepaths and mutant-gene scanners."

"And what is she doing here?" Major Grey demanded, gesturing at the drooling woman with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.

"She was shipped here as part of our drive to create viable infiltrator agents," Elisabeth explained, suddenly feeling vindicated about Major Grey's apparent lack of consistency. "We had hoped to implant a number of our more skilled and psi-shielded spies with a derivative of her metamorphic powers, so that we could destroy the rebel scum from the inside out." She paused. "The process has so far been… unsuccessful… but my staff's scientists have high hopes it will prove fruitful eventually."

"I hope so too, Colonel," Major Grey mused thoughtfully, rubbing her chin with one gloved hand. "I'd hate to see so much time and effort go to waste, after all. Inefficiency doesn't become you."

Elisabeth faked a humbled laugh. "You flatter me, Major."

"You flatter yourself well enough without me having to say anything," Major Grey said, like a snake about to strike. "I'm simply stating a fact."

Just then, as if on cue, the blue-skinned woman crawled slowly up to the clear, steel-laced plastic door of her cell and pointed an oozing, spittle-coated finger at Major Grey's shocked face. "Pretty," she gurgled in a sing-song, phlegm-choked voice, before her body shifted itself into an almost exact replica of Major Grey, complete with greatcoat and cap. The only key differences were that the doppelganger had glittering yellow eyes instead of Major Grey's piercing green ones, that the double's cap was perched at a precarious angle on her head, and that the double's porcelain-pale features were still twisted into an insane, drool-soaked grin. "I like pretty things."

Elisabeth was gratified to feel a wave of disgust radiating from Major Grey's mind. Apparently there were some things that a KGB gorgon  _was_  afraid of, after all… "Just this way, Major," she said diplomatically, before gesturing down the corridor. Gratefully, Major Grey followed her away from the giggling metamorph, visibly displaying her relief as she did so. A few hundred metres down the corridor, Elisabeth pointed to the battered form lying on the thin pallet in the corner of the cell in front of her. "As you requested, Major," Elisabeth stated briefly before tapping in the door's release code, making it slide gently to one side and the form inside it sit up, "one James Logan, rebel leader."

Jim Logan watched the two women enter his cell, and shook his head. "I ain't got nothing more to tell you," he said, a slight note of fear creeping into the edges of his voice. Major Grey smiled, all her earlier vulnerability vanishing as she did so. For what it was worth, Elisabeth  _really_  pitied the rebel now.

"Oh, I think you do, Mr Logan," Major Grey said. "Don't try to fight me. You won't win, I can assure you…"

* * *

Kitty sat on an upturned crate and waited until Madrox had finished explaining the situation to the rest of the resistance unit who had made this section of the Brooklyn subway system their home. While he did that, she took in some of the more recognisable fighters – across from her, a huge man stood with his massively-muscled arms folded over his equally muscular chest, a pair of absurdly small, armless sunglasses clipped to the bridge of his nose. Over towards where Madrox was delivering his case, Kitty could see a muscular woman with a ragged, choppy head of purple-hued hair idly pulling a sharp-edged chunk of steel into different shapes with her bare hands, and a silver-haired woman who simply clutched an AK-47 with both hands and seemed intent on listening to Madrox as he made everybody aware of what was happening. Kitty returned her attention to Madrox as he finished speaking, and the local resistance leader, a woman Madrox had identified earlier as Val Cooper, raised her hand for quiet after wiping her hands on her grimy fatigues and running her hands through her blonde hair.

"Well," she began, "I'm not going to lie to you, Jamie – if this were any other man you were talking about, I'd tell you to get out of here and not come back. But knowing what Logan knows, and knowing that the Ivans would love to get their hands on that information, I don't think we have any choice, do you?"

"No, ma'am," Madrox replied soberly. "So you'll give me some of your men to try a rescue attempt?"

Cooper paused. "I didn't say that, exactly. What assurances do I have that you'll bring as many of them out as you went in with?"

"Me," Kitty said, causing every head in the room to turn towards her. Kitty relished the sensation of having every pair of eyes focused totally on her, and continued "I can get us into the Empire State without tripping any alarms, and I can get us out the same way too."

"Really?" Cooper said, sounding intrigued. "And how, exactly, can you do that?"

Kitty pushed herself up off the crate she was sitting on and walked slowly over to where Cooper was standing. When she was face to face with the other woman, she smiled and held up her right hand, phasing it through the nearest wall up to her mid-forearm. "That's how. All the Reds' fancy security systems don't mean shit if we can walk right past them, right?" She paused, thinking that she should probably provide a little more explanation. "I used to run sabotage missions for the resistance out west, and I found out pretty quickly that if I phased through something electrical, it got fried." She shrugged. "Hey, it's better than nothing, right?"

Cooper looked thoughtful for a moment or so, and then nodded. "I suppose it is, yes." Then she beckoned over the hulking giant that Kitty had spotted earlier and said "Guido, I'll need you to hand-pick a squad for this mission. Make sure you're well-prepared for any eventuality."

The huge man saluted with one ham-sized hand and grinned. "With pleasure, boss-lady…"


	6. One Hundred Bullets

Kitty Pryde sat down on an upturned packing crate, cracked her knuckles and extracted some dirt from underneath her fingernails with the point of a serrated combat knife, before picking up one of the handguns that Val Cooper had insisted she carry and popping off a few well-aimed rounds at the crude targets that had been set up at the other end of the chamber. She didn't like guns much, instead preferring to kill the enemy up close with her blades, but she knew that she'd probably need all the protection she could get when moving in on the Empire State Building. She knew war didn't exactly make allowances for personal preference, after all, so it was probably wiser to be prepared for anything – better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have one, she decided.

"Hey, little lady," came a richly-accented Southern voice suddenly. Kitty looked up to see a muscular blond man leaning against the wall closest to her. He had obviously been quite lanky in his youth, but that lankiness had given way to corded muscle and knotted scar tissue; the crude train-track marks that showed where he'd been stitched up after various battles were etched all over his forearms, and in the skin of his exposed neck. Kitty supposed there was more evidence underneath the flak jacket he wore, but she didn't want to find out right now. She wasn't exactly in the mood to be hit on... "Your name's Kitty, right? I'm Sam."

"That's right," Kitty said, turning back to her gun and aiming at a large, fearsome-looking cockroach crawling slowly across the wall in front of her. "Something I can do for you, friend?"

"I think there's something we can do for each other, don't you?" the man said, a shark's smile splitting his handsome features in half. He moved forwards and took a hold of Kitty's forearm. "You want my advice, honey? Don't make any noise."

Kitty grinned and drew one of her stiletto daggers from its sheath on her belt, the blade's razor edge glittering in the low light like the eye of a cat. "Sure. I'll try not to make you scream too hard, either."

"You like it rough, huh?" Sam chuckled, before he backhanded her across the face with a balled fist before she had a chance to bring her weapon to bear, and sent her sprawling into the filth that coated the floor of the sewer tunnel. Rats and cockroaches skittered noisily away from her as she fell flat on her face, black muck and filmy water preventing her from seeing anything for a few seconds. "That rough enough for you, bitch?"

Kitty blinked, trying to get the white stars to clear from her vision as she spat out rancid sewer filth, and dimly heard the click of a pistol being cocked and a hollow-point round being chambered. "Put it back in your pants, Guthrie," Madrox said, "or I'll make sure your brains take a permanent holiday from that thick hillbilly skull of yours." Kitty pushed herself to her feet just in time to see the blond man visibly weighing up his options and then deciding that it was a little too risky to try outwitting a bullet.

"All right, Madrox – you win," he said sourly, before he turned his uncomfortably intense gaze towards Kitty, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine as he did so. "But the next time I see you I'm taking what's mine, girl." He turned on one heel and loped off down the tunnel like a prowling wolf, and Kitty allowed herself a deep sigh of relief when he finally turned a corner and left her field of vision.

"Nice guy," she said after a few moments' pause. Madrox laughed and then nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, he's a real prince," Madrox agreed. "Guy's never been quite right in the head; at least, not since I've known him, anyway. Val says he had to watch his whole family get strung up by the Ivans – seeing something like that's got to do something to a guy's mind, you know? I'm still wondering why Val even let him into the underground with a history like that, but I guess if he's still able to pick up a gun, she doesn't have a problem with what he does outside of missions – within reason, anyway. I'll have to tell her about this little episode the first chance I get." He clicked the safety catch of his pistol back on again and slid it into the waistband of his fatigues, flexing his gloved hands and blowing on his fingertips to keep them warm. "Damn, it's cold down here," he said. "You want to go find some warmth?"

"Very much," Kitty agreed, and followed Madrox down the tunnel towards the larger communal area, where several large braziers were spewing out copious amounts of hot air. Madrox chose the nearest one and sat down next to a young Native American woman who was sitting cross-legged with an AK-47 laid across her knees, warming her hands against the brazier's fierce heat. Her raven-black hair was arranged in two long plaits that she had tied together, and her pretty face was spattered with grime and dust. Kitty hadn't seen the woman before and decided to wait for Madrox to make the introductions – after the events of a few moments ago she wasn't feeling particularly gregarious, and really didn't want to end up having to eat sewer crap again...

"This is Dani Moonstar," Madrox said, as if on cue. "Dani Moonstar, Kitty Pryde."

"Hello," the woman called Dani said, nodding quietly at Kitty as she rubbed her hands together. "Nice to meet you, Kitty."

"Nice to meet you too," Kitty replied, liking the huge contrast between her last introduction and this one. "So, uh… what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Dani raised an eyebrow. "Well,  _there's_  a line I've never heard before - but to answer your question, the Russkies took over my reservation a few years back, and we all had to scatter just to keep from being killed. I found my way here, and I've been fighting the Ivans ever since." She paused, then looked at Kitty curiously, a faint spark of recognition firing in her eyes. "I saw you earlier, when you were talking to Val, but I've never seen you in New York before. Where are you from?"

"Chicago," Kitty replied, spreading her hands so they caught the maximum amount of heat. "I got brought here by this jackass." She jerked a thumb at Madrox, who gave Dani a thumbs-up sign and grinned. "I was supposed to help Logan's group do some sabotage work, but the Russkies caught him – and the rest you know."

Dani nodded thoughtfully as she absorbed the information, chewing it over and digesting it before she spoke again. "So what do you think of New York?" she asked conversationally. "Liking it so far?"

"About as much as I like stabbing myself in the head," Kitty said, in a frank and honest tone. "This Southern guy just tried to force himself on me while I was doing some target practice."

"Oh. You've met Sam, then," Dani said, sounding almost apologetic. "He didn't – I mean, you're all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine – my knight in shining armour was there to save me." Kitty gestured again towards Madrox, who struck a heroic pose and grinned again, like a Cheshire cat. "Although that's not to say I couldn't have got out of that by myself, of course." She drew one of her knives and twirled it expertly around her fingers, the blade whirring as it sliced effortlessly through the air. "Let's just say I could have made that asshole sing a little bit higher if he'd pushed the point any more than he did."

Madrox's broad smile faded, and he tapped Kitty on the shoulder indignantly. "Okay, kid, two points: one, you were totally in need of my help back there, and two,  _never_  talk about cutting a guy's balls off while there's another guy standing right beside you." He shook his head and glanced towards the ceiling of the chamber. " _Women…_ "

* * *

Elisabeth Braddock sat at the rear of the cell in which James Logan was imprisoned, waiting for Major Grey to finish her interrogation. The physical nature of the interrogation had surprised her – not only had Major Grey used her telepathic powers to extract information, but she had also used careful application of scalpels and other bladed instruments to lower Logan's resistance. The wounds were fleeting, thanks to Logan's flesh closing almost as quickly as Major Grey made the cuts, but their effect was no less noticeable – Elisabeth could feel, even from where she was sitting, that Logan's mind was fraying more and more, with delicate information beginning to flake off and become easy for Major Grey to snatch up and store.

"Now then, Logan…" Major Grey said, as her bare, delicate fingers poised the scalpel's lethal edge next to the rough skin of his cheek, "do you wish to tell me anything else about the location of your rebel weapons?"

"Fuck you," Logan muttered through bloodstained lips. Major Grey tutted disapprovingly, and shook her head.

"Wrong answer, Mr Logan," she said, and with an almost feather-light touch, she opened his cheek from ear to lip with a single stroke of her blade. "Never mind. It's just a matter of time before you crack." The wound closed even as blood spattered Major Grey's hand, but Elisabeth could feel that the wound had had its desired effect – Logan's resolve was wavering even further, and there were more juicy pieces of information waiting to be discovered than even she had found. Major Grey licked the scattered drops of blood from her fingers almost coyly, as if she were savouring the taste of her prisoner's lingering despair, and then turned slightly back towards where Elisabeth was sitting. "May I have a little privacy, please?"

Elisabeth could feel a scowl building inside her, based on her annoyance at this interloper's effortless success at interrogating the prisoner, but she suppressed it for the time being. "Certainly, Comrade Grey," she said, through gritted teeth. "I'll be in my office – I have plenty of work to be getting on with, as you know." She pushed herself up off her chair, walked out through the door of the cell and turned her full attention towards getting to the elevator at the end of the corridor. Walking past the two soldiers guarding the door to the cell block, she turned and saluted them. "Make sure the Major is well looked-after," she said. "I don't want either of you two being shipped off to Alaska, after all." She managed a thin smile so that the two helmeted men would feel a little more at ease, and then snapped off a quick salute. "Long live the Revolution."

The two guards bellowed a simultaneous echo of her words, and then Elisabeth turned on one heel and entered the elevator back to her penthouse office. Pushing the intercom button on the elevator's interior panel, she said "Comrade Drake, please report to my office immediately." Knowing that he would be able to hear her wherever he was in the complex, she stood back in the elevator and folded her arms across her chest, satisfied. What she had in mind was risky, that was a given, but she knew that if it succeeded, Major Grey wouldn't be able to argue against it. Success was very hard to deny, after all.

Lieutenant Drake was waiting for her when she stepped off the elevator. "You wanted to see me, Comrade-Colonel?" he asked her, after they had exchanged formal salutes.

"Yes, Comrade Drake, I did," Elisabeth replied briefly, as she marched across her office and took her seat behind her desk. "I want this rebellion over and done with  _tonight_. Deploy as many troops as you can – and make sure we achieve total saturation of all the locations I took from Logan's mind earlier today. I want the rebels' operation crippled beyond repair, and I want their leaders' heads on pikes." A thin, cruel smile blossomed on her lips like a twisted black flower, dripping malice like poisonous sap. "I think such a…  _visceral_  demonstration of our authority will go a long way towards convincing the rebels they can't win this war, don't you?"

Lieutenant Drake nodded in silent agreement, but then Elisabeth felt a wave of doubt flooding his mind. "But… Comrade-Major Grey is still interrogating the prisoner," he said, in a faltering, uncertain voice. "Shouldn't we wait until she's finished with –"

"I'm in charge here, Comrade Drake, not that KGB bitch," Elisabeth snapped, angry that her authority was being questioned by somebody who, unlike Major Grey, had no right to do so. "We have sufficient intelligence to move on the rebels now, tonight, and I will not wait for that self-righteous cow to finish doing what I've already done." When he heard her describing Major Grey in those unflattering terms, Lieutenant Drake visibly blenched, his face turning fish-belly pale in the space of a few seconds.

"Is it… wise… to talk like that about Major Grey?" he asked, his normally confident and brash voice turning skittish and nervous. "They say the KGB can hear everything you say, everything you think –"

Elisabeth scowled, and toyed actively with the automatic pistol at her belt. For a moment, she seriously considered putting a bullet through the man's forehead for his childish stupidity, but she decided against it, for the simple reason that good adjutants were hard to come by, and Comrade Drake was one of the best. "Oh, do grow up, Comrade Drake," she snarled, her annoyance bleeding through into her words. "Walls certainly do not have ears, and I most certainly am not afraid of Comrade Grey's influences. Not any more, at any rate – when the rebels have been crushed and New York is finally secured, thanks to what we are going to do tonight, she won't be able to argue that her way of doing things was correct. And then, Comrade Drake, I think you'll find that we'll be able to talk about her as much as we like." She rubbed at her eyes then, feeling fatigue gnaw at her bones for a second or two. "How is Comrade Rasputin progressing with Omega Red's tentacles?"

"They… appear to have grafted well," Comrade Drake said uneasily, as if he were still afraid to talk freely, "and Comrade Rasputin has been keen to return to duty, even though his doctors advise that he should wait at least a week before doing anything strenuous, just to see if the grafts have really taken."

Elisabeth mulled over that information for a moment or two, weighing up her options. "They advise waiting a week?"

Lieutenant Drake nodded, still looking a little uncertain.

"But Comrade Rasputin feels he is capable of returning to duty now?"

Lieutenant Drake nodded again, seeing where this was headed and gaining a little more confidence because of it.

"Good," Elisabeth said. "Deploy him at the centre of our assault. I want him to show the rebel filth they can't escape the Red Army." She knew that deploying Comrade Rasputin against doctor's orders was a risky idea, but she knew that his power would come in extremely useful – and she had been known to place extravagant wagers on operations like this in the past. This was no different to South America or Mexico, and she had come out victorious there, too. New York was going to burn, and she was going to be there to see its last gasps of resistance die.

* * *

Kitty flicked on the safety catches on her pistols and shoved them into the holsters at her waist. Val Cooper had decided it was time to rescue Logan, and she was very glad about that – she didn't want this to be dragged out any further than it already had been, after all. Madrox sat across from her, arming himself in the same way that she was, and his face twisted into a wry smile. "Ready?" he asked, trying to sound as light-hearted as possible.

"No," Kitty replied flatly. "I'm nowhere near ready. Matter of fact, I'm fucking terrified. You?"

"Same," Madrox said, shrugging himself into a battered flak jacket and pulling his gloves on a little tighter. "You wanna make out before we go, or what?"

Kitty laughed despite herself. "I'd eat you alive, man. Don't tempt me."

"Aww, come on!" Madrox exclaimed, doing his best to look aggrieved. "I'm a great kisser! If I were you, I'd want to be ready to meet my maker after having sampled the best life had to offer. Once you've had Madrox, you never go back." He winked at her, and patted her on the back of the hand gently. "Been nice knowing you, kid. Here's hoping we both make it out of this without a scratch."

"Here's hoping," Kitty agreed, before she reached forward, grasped Madrox's collar and pulled his mouth onto hers, kissing him with a brief but fierce passion that left him gasping for air when she released him. While he was still trying to process what had just happened, Kitty winked at him and said "Told you I'd eat you alive."

Madrox was about to say something then, but before he could do so, there came the rattling crack of gunfire from the tunnel at the entrance to the chamber, sentries shouting and screaming as they were perforated by dozens of bullets. Kitty whirled, just in time to see Soviet soldiers swarming through into the base, their weapons spitting yellow tracer fire and mowing down unarmed rebels with every pull of the trigger. "Oh, fuck… oh, fuck," Kitty breathed, stunned. "They found us…"

Madrox grabbed her arm and dragged her into some cover behind some packing crates. It wasn't much, but it was better than being caught out in the open. Kitty watched, horrified, as half a dozen rebel soldiers were shredded by a fusillade of rifle fire. Hopelessly, she fired her pistols at anything wearing a red star, her bullets punching into thick body armour and occasionally flesh. Her shots were wild and ill-aimed, though, and rarely did anything other than cause grazing wounds. When her guns cycled dry, she put them away without bothering to reload and instead drew two of her knives, raising herself into a throwing position as she did so. Before she could hurl the knives at the targets she'd picked out, though, Madrox grabbed her arm and dragged her back behind the crate in a single urgent movement.

"Kid, we gotta get out of here – staying to fight these bastards now is suicide," he said, keeping his gaze locked with hers. Then, he glanced quickly over to the chamber's rear tunnel, and Kitty saw that many of the rebels had had the same idea and were fleeing down it as fast as they could. "See?" Madrox urged her. "We gotta move, now, or we're dead." He raised himself into a crouch and ran as fast as he could towards the stream of rebels, keeping Kitty's hand locked in his own as the two of them tried desperately to keep something between them and the Soviet troops. As he did so, however, a bullet hurtled into the plaster of the wall by his head, sending a chunk of it thumping down on him and filling his lungs with dust. "Oh, fuck this," he growled, coughing, and unhooked a grenade from his bandolier before slamming his fist into the wall. Another Madrox popped into existence beside him and grabbed Kitty's hand.

"What – what are you doing?" Kitty asked, even though she knew exactly what it was Madrox was doing, and was feeling sick to her stomach because of it.

"I'm giving you a chance to get out of here, that's what I'm doing," he stated flatly. Then he turned to the other Madrox and said "You take good care of her." Then he pulled the pin on the grenade with his teeth and dashed into the open, yelling "Fire in the hole!" He didn't get more than two or three paces before automatic weapons fire ripped him to pieces, but the grenade stayed intact, and with his last ounce of strength, Madrox hurled it at the invading Soviet forces. It exploded right in the centre of a squad of troopers, spraying hot, jagged metal in every direction and tearing flesh from bone as if it was nothing more than confetti.

Kitty didn't see that. She and the "new" Madrox had managed to make it to the mouth of the escape tunnel and were away from the bulk of the Soviet task force.

Suddenly, despite the fact that she wasn't alone, Kitty felt as if there was nobody else in the world who could help her. It wasn't until she saw Hank and Cecilia beckoning to her urgently that she realised she couldn't dwell on what had just happened, and she needed to run, or she'd end up just the same.

 _Just another victim,_  she thought bitterly.


	7. Picking Up The Pieces

Kitty kept her head below the top of the tailgate of the converted truck she and the rest of her ragged comrades – Sam Guthrie, Dani Moonstar, and Jamie Madrox - were travelling in, as the bullets of dozens of Soviet soldiers hurtled towards them with unrelenting accuracy. Kitty flinched as one punched through the metal and slammed into the sandbags that were piled up behind the truck's rear window, spraying blackened, dirty sand everywhere. The heavy coughing of Hank McCoy's twin-linked machine guns made her feel a little more secure, as he worked the guns back and forth in a wide arc, sending steel-jacketed armour-piercing rounds ripping towards the pursuing soldiers. Risking a glimpse over the tailgate, Kitty saw one soldier folded almost in half by the impact of one of those rounds, his body suddenly crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut as his guts were sent flying across the wall of the tunnel, and silently spat a curse at the dead man – and then ducked right back underneath the tailgate as a bullet hurtled into the metal just below her left eye. She'd been phased at the time, just to be safe, but reflex reactions honed over a lifetime of fighting were a hard thing to overcome.

"Put your fucking foot down!" she yelled at Cecilia Reyes as the other woman pulled the steering wheel hard to the right and swung the truck around a bend in the tunnel. "They're gaining on us!"

"Don't you think I know that?" Cecilia shouted hoarsely, before a moment of inspiration seemed to strike her. "Hank, show her where the demolition charges are. Maybe that'll give us some breathing room…"

The big burly man nodded and, while the Soviet soldiers were still on the other side of the tunnel's lazy bend, knelt down to pull aside a heavy Kevlar-laced tarpaulin, under which were a number of thick blocks of plastic explosive. He picked one up, took a fuse from the bundle that was piled alongside the plastique, and handed them both to Kitty, his huge paw dwarfing Kitty's girlish fingers. "You know how to use these?" he asked, in a way that suggested he already knew what the answer was going to be.

Kitty nodded, and was pleased to see a gratified smile spread across Hank's stubbly features. "Yeah," she said. "I blew up a Russkie arms dump a few months ago with a bagful of these things."

"Good," Hank replied as he took up his position behind his guns again. "Then you know what to do with it, don't you?"

Kitty grinned, and, as the Soviet soldiers began rounding the corner of the tunnel, she jabbed the fuse's contact points into the soft plastique and threw the block down into the centre of the advancing troops. Before they could get organised enough to hurl it back at her, she found the explosives' detonator and pushed the small red button on its surface. The tunnel behind the truck disappeared instantly into a white-hot blizzard of collapsing rubble, with Russian soldiers screaming as they were crushed under huge chunks of masonry and concrete. As the truck sped away from the explosion's ground zero, the silence that followed it was almost eerie in its own way. Kitty sat back and exhaled deeply, wiping some dirty sweat off her forehead and lying back on the few intact sandbags behind her, and grinned at Madrox, who was sat opposite her. He smiled wearily back at her and gave her a brief thumbs-up before slapping a fresh clip of bullets into one of his automatic pistols.

"So… now that the Ivans can't blow us to hell, where to next?" he said, aiming at an imaginary target on the wall ahead of the truck.

"Hell in a handbasket, Yankee," Sam Guthrie said in a cold, reptilian tone as he pulled his battered flak jacket tighter around his body in order to try and keep out some of the tunnel's cold breeze. "Face facts – we ain't got no base. We ain't got no leader. Where the hell we gonna go?"

"Sam, shut up," Dani snapped, her face haggard and drawn, with a trail of blood running down one side of it like the tributaries of a river. "We don't know that Val's dead –"

"I do," Sam snorted angrily, jabbing a gloved finger at Dani as if it was the point of a knife. "I saw her get her goddamn head blown off by one of those Russkie bastards. So now we're out one leader and we ain't got clue one what to do next."

"Yes, we do," Kitty said, leaning forwards so that she could fix Guthrie with a flinty glare. It did the trick, and he shut up almost straight away with only a minimal amount of protest – which Kitty found herself pleasantly surprised about. "We're going to the Empire State Building, and we're going to find Logan." She paused, noting the astonished looks of everybody else in the truck with some trepidation before she continued "We need a leader, right? So let's go find one."

"Wait a second, kid," Madrox said, placing a concerned hand on her arm. "Don't you think we ought to be thinking about staying alive first? The Russkies aren't going to give up on finding us, especially after that little stunt we pulled back there."

"So?" Kitty snapped angrily. "So what? I'm sick of running, Madrox. I've been running from the Ivans since I was ten years old – I don't want to run any more."

"Nice idea, buttercup," Sam jeered, a crooked sneer creasing his face, "but just where were you expectin' to get enough firepower to get inside the Empire State? Hate to break it to ya, sugar, but we ain't exactly an army any more. Hell, we ain't even –"

Dani drew a pistol from her waistband and jammed it under Sam's stubbly jaw before he had any time to process exactly what was going on. "Shut. Up," she snarled. "I've just about had it with all your bullshit, Guthrie. Here are your options: you can stick with us and try to fix this mess, or are you can give up, roll over and wait for the Russkies to give you a third eye. Which is it going to be?" Sam scowled blackly and held both hands up as if he were surrendering. Dani smiled thinly at that, and clicked the safety catch of her pistol back on. "That's what I thought." Then she looked back at Kitty and tried to look a little brighter – without much success. "I think there's a temporary safe-house about half a klick away from here. If the Ivans haven't got to it yet, we could use that to catch our breath."

"Sounds good to me," Kitty replied wearily. "Let's go."

Elisabeth Braddock folded her arms across her chest and tried not to smirk as Major Grey paced across the floor in front of her, trying to digest what Elisabeth had just told her. "Let me get this straight," the black-coated woman said as she turned on one heel, her peaked cap held in one gloved hand, "you went against my direct orders and went ahead with the assault on the rebels before I had finished with Logan?"

"That's right," Elisabeth replied coldly. "Let me remind you, Major, that I outrank you – and furthermore, that this station is under my command, not yours. I felt it was in our best interests to make the first move, and so I made it. And as I think you'll agree, we have had excellent results. The rebels' war machine has been severely compromised – we captured medical supplies, several of their most high-ranking leaders, hundreds of weapons, and several thousand rounds of ammunition. As a matter of fact, I had one of their key leaders brought here for questioning." She nodded towards Lieutenant Drake, who crossed the room and opened the double doors to let in a couple of brawny soldiers who were carrying the limp, battered form of a blonde woman in bloody, torn military fatigues. The woman was sporting a lengthy crease in her skull where a bullet had evidently glanced off it, and her head lolled limply, as if she had no strength to keep it upright. "Major Grey, may I introduce you to Valerie Cooper."

Major Grey stepped forwards, intrigued by this new prisoner, and cupped the woman's bruised and blood-encrusted face in her right hand, raising her half-conscious gaze to meet her own. "She looks as if she's been shot," she said, redundantly. "Are you sure she doesn't need medical treatment?"

"We gave her all the medical treatment she needs," Elisabeth said in an abrupt tone. "Most of her wounds are superficial, save for that head wound. However… the field medic's report said she ought to make a full recovery once she gets a blood transfusion, and our own medics confirm that diagnosis." She walked closer to where Major Grey was standing, and gestured down at Cooper's limp form. "I'm still debating whether or not I should just have her executed once we've finished with her, or whether I could use her as fodder for my scientists' research." She smiled cruelly. "Doctor MacTaggert does love new subjects, after all." Her smile widened, and she continued "As a matter of fact, I have already had James Logan transferred down to her lab – I have asked her to work on a way of replicating his healing abilities for our soldiers. I think that would be a tremendous boost for the rank-and-file troops, don't you?"

Major Grey raised her eyebrows briefly. "I suppose so," she admitted, although Elisabeth could tell that it was only a grudging admittance at best. She ignored that small fact and basked in Major Grey's annoyance, since she knew she probably wouldn't get a chance as good as this for some time, if at all. She decided to make it last…

* * *

 

Logan blinked himself awake, and found himself bound, gagged, and hanging from a metal frame in what appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. He could feel cold metal biting into his wrists and ankles, and he could tell, without even looking to confirm it, that he was naked save for some coarse cotton undergarments. From the shadows up ahead of him he could see the glint of light reflecting off the surface of what he assumed to be glass, and he could smell the soft odour of a female human. "Come out where I can see you," he grunted, his tongue feeling fat and unresponsive in his mouth, and the piercing sound of a woman's laughter cut through the still air like a razor blade.

"Presumptuous, aren't ye?" said a voice in a soft, lilting Highland accent. Logan shivered against his will as the words seemed to slither down his spine. Then, a slender but bookish-looking woman moved from the darkness and he had a picture to go with those unsettling feelings. She was clad in a white lab coat and had a band preventing her chin-length brown hair from falling into her eyes. A small pair of rectangular reading glasses was perched on the tip of her nose, and she adjusted them slightly as she regarded her prisoner with a disapproving air. Then, she walked forwards and picked up a clipboard that had been laid on a table-top a few metres away from where Logan was hung up, before taking a pen out of her coat pocket and ticking off a few things with it. "Do ye know why ye're here?"

"No," Logan said, "but I bet you're going to tell me – so spit it out, bitch."

"Hmm," the woman said, as if she were briefly dismayed by the word. "Well, Comrade-Colonel Braddock would like to know if your healing gift can be replicated for our soldiers. Now, I can make this as painless as ye want it to be, Mr Logan – if ye do as I tell ye."

"Go to hell," Logan snarled as defiantly as he could. It wasn't much, especially after that red-headed witch's torture session had shredded his mental defences almost to breaking point, but it made him feel a little better to at least try to sound antagonistic. If she were intimidated, however, the Scottish woman didn't show it. Instead, she simply stepped close to him and brought her face level with his own. Her brown eyes narrowed to slits, and she produced a gleaming knife from one of her pockets. Logan could see the edge of it glitter in the light, and flinched reflexively, instantly disgusted with himself for doing so.

"Ye don't know anything about hell, boyo," she hissed, as if she were angry with him for even daring to mention the word. "Ye don't know anything at all." Then, as if she had achieved the effect she had wanted to produce, she pulled down one of her sleeves and showed Logan a set of numbers that had been crudely tattooed into her forearm. "See these?" she said bluntly. "These are identification numbers from the gulag in Edinburgh. I only got out because they needed my skills here – and I'll do anything it takes to keep from going back. Anything, ye hear me?" She paused, taking a deep breath to compose herself, and Logan could smell a definite shift in the pheromones her body was radiating like waves of heat. "Ye want me to go to hell, Mr Logan? I've already been there." She stepped forwards and scraped a few skin cells off his forearm deftly, depositing them into a Petri dish that she held in her other hand and ignoring Logan's brief grunt of pain as a small trail of blood trickled down his bicep. "We'll see if ye have to go too, I suppose."

* * *

 

Kitty pulled herself out of the sewer, wiped some stinking slime off her fatigues, and followed Madrox towards the run-down building that the rest of the rag-tag group of rebels were heading for. It was a crumbling tenement block, with rusting fire-escapes clinging forlornly to its outer surface like steel cobwebs, kicked-over garbage cans spewing trash and rotten fruit onto the sidewalk outside it, and creaking, half-off-their-hinges doors slamming open and closed in its front entrance. It was a brief distance towards it, but she stopped when Hank held up a closed fist silently, and hunkered back down into the alleyway that he had just left. "We have company," he said, and pointed towards the side of the building, where a small group of Soviet soldiers was standing. They were relaxed, chatting and laughing over the bodies of several rebels that they had obviously killed during their arrival. One of them was even knelt down beside one of the corpses, carving off pieces for the other men to take as trophies. He handed a bloodstained, ragged-edged ear to one of his comrades, and Kitty felt bitter bile rising in her throat.

"Sick bastard's enjoying it," she hissed, disgusted, and felt her hand ghosting towards the needle-sharp throwing knife at her belt. Cecilia saw her doing it, and grabbed her fingers before she could throw her blade.

"Wait a second, Kitty," she murmured, her brown eyes focused entirely on the small group of soldiers in front of her. "I ain't exactly happy to see them doing that either, but if you give away our position now, all you're going to do is get us into more trouble." Then, in an almost imperceptible movement, she slipped her pistol from her belt and screwed a silencer into place without making a sound. "Come on. We're going to get us some Russkie scalps, boys."

"Oh boy," Madrox said, glancing at the sky hopelessly, before he too drew a weapon and followed Cecilia towards the small group of soldiers. Kitty watched Hank and the other rebels with what almost amounted to a sense of wonder. They seemed to be able to move through piles of crumpled newspaper without making a sound, or through broken glass without disturbing a single shard. They were like living wraiths, and she felt a horrible sense of envy that they were able to do so without any mutant phasing abilities.

They moved to within twenty metres of their targets without giving them any sign that they were there, and when Hank felt the moment was right, he stood up out of his cover and bellowed "Now!" before spraying the soldiers with a lethal barrage of armour-piercing rounds from his rifle. Sam, Dani and the others joined him instantly, and Kitty dove forwards with both of her guns blazing. Getting up close with the trophy-collector she had earmarked a moment or two earlier, she smashed his nose with a savage backhanded blow from the butt of the gun in her right hand, and then emptied the magazine of her other gun right into his face, causing his skull to disintegrate in a shower of blood and bone and brains. His body tottered for a split second before it crumpled and Kitty was faced with another soldier, who had had enough time to bring his AK-47 to bear, unleashing a swathe of bullets as he did so. Kitty simply phased through them and drove the heel of her hand up into the man's nose, forcing sharp shards of bone right up into his brain. She screamed as she did so, rage and anger pouring from her vocal cords like boiling acid. Beside her, she could make out Cecilia and Hank fighting side-by-side, Cecilia's body apparently repelling anything the Russians threw at it – punches, bullets, knives, anything. Cecilia whirled on the point of one foot and jammed the barrel of her huge six-shooter right into a gap in one soldier's chest armour and pulled the trigger once. The man's chest evaporated a split-second after the gun's booming shriek had faded away, a good section of his chest armour disappearing with it.

To her left, as she struggled with a desperate-looking soldier, Kitty could see Sam and Dai performing equally well – Dani was simply dancing around one soldier's flailing fists and wildly-inaccurate pistol fire and picking him apart piece by piece, using sharp blows from her hands and feet to paralyse nerve centres and shut down his body one step at a time, before she drew one of her pistols and shot him between the eyes. He looked surprised for all of two seconds before he collapsed into a warm, steaming puddle of his own blood.

As for Sam, Kitty could see that something had snapped inside him. He had grasped his rifle by the barrel and was beating a clearly very-dead Russian's body to a messy pulp with it, screaming and sobbing and bellowing mindlessly until Hank grabbed him by the arms and said "Sam, calm down. They're all dead. You can stop now. Easy, son. Easy." It took several minutes for Sam to vent all of his rage and pain, and even then he had to take several deep breaths and sit for at least five minutes before he had fully recovered. By that time, though, the small group of rebels was inside the building and taking stock of their surroundings. As they entered the largest of the ground floor rooms, Madrox whistled loudly and gestured at the numerous cockroaches scuttling across the floor.

"Man, you get rid of one kind of roach and there are still hundreds of the bastards waiting to come back!" he exclaimed in disgust. Kitty felt one side of her mouth pulling itself up into a brief smile, and she put one hand on Madrox's shoulder and kissed his cheek encouragingly.

"Never mind, soldier," she said, "maybe we can spruce this place up some, huh?"

She revelled in his surprised expression then, and quickly walked off into another of the ground floor rooms, to see what else she could find.

What she saw then stunned her, and gave her hope that this crazy plan of hers was actually going to work. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of weapons, and stacks of grenades were sitting in the middle of the floor, all of them looking like they had either been looted from the rebel forces or brought here by the Russians. "Damn, we really lucked out this time," Madrox drawled as he came into the room behind her, along with the others. "Russkies must have decided to use this place as an ammo dump."

"No, really, you think so?" Dani remarked sarcastically, before she walked over to one of the stacks of AK-47 rifles, picked one up, racked its slide and fired a few rounds experimentally into the wall opposite her, sending chips of plaster flying. "God, there must be enough ammo and weapons here to arm a whole division."

"It would seem so," Hank said thoughtfully, as he juggled a couple of hand grenades from hand to hand, "which means we can't stay here for very long, either. The Russians are likely to come looking for the men we killed once they realise they're not transmitting back to their base camp."

"Doesn't matter," Kitty said as she lit a cigarette. She took a grateful drag and exhaled the smoke in a blue-grey plume. "We've got enough weapons here to crack the Empire State like an egg – stock up on whatever you can carry and follow me out of here. We're going to end this…"


	8. Liberty's Tears

Kitty gasped, feeling a tingle running down her spine into every last part of her body, and then, still careful not to make too much noise, eased herself gently away from Madrox and started to zip up her fatigue pants. Madrox tucked his t-shirt back into his own fatigues and winked at her, a broad smile flitting across his lips. It hadn't been the most romantic situation Kitty had ever been in, considering their surroundings and the situation in which they had found themselves, but it had been enough to take the edge off her understandable feelings of tension. Leaning over towards her partner in crime, she kissed him for a brief moment or two, enjoying the taste of his mouth and the feel of his skin against her own, and trailed a hand down one of his stubbly cheeks. "Thanks; I needed that," she said softly. "But just for the record, Jamie, you're still a dumb fucking idiot. Just in case you were getting any ideas about this becoming a permanent arrangement."

Madrox chuckled, and ran a hand through her short, closely-clipped hair, before tracing the smooth lines of her cheek affectionately with his fingers. "Sure, Kit – you're the boss. But you know… once you've had Jamie, one man is never enough. You'll come crawling back and you won't even be able to stop yourself. You'll see."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," Kitty laughed as she smoothed out her clothes and tried not to look too dishevelled. "I was the one doing all the driving, there – and you know it, bitch."

"Flattery," Madrox began, a gleam flashing in his eye, "will get you everywhere." They kissed again then, and made their way back into the main chamber of the armoury that they and the rest of their rag-tag group of rebels – Hank McCoy, Cecilia Reyes, Dani Moonstar and Sam Guthrie – had discovered in the ruins of an old rebel safe house. They were careful not to hold hands or do anything that might have cemented their relationship into anything solid; considering the danger they were both in right now, it seemed stupid to try and start anything when one or both of them might die within the next twenty-four hours. Around them, the rest of their group were stuffing their pockets and some of the satchels scattered around the base with as many weapons and explosives as they could carry. Sam Guthrie tested the weight of a sleek, powerful combat shotgun and then shoved dozens of cartridges into the pouches at his belt and on his uniform. Hank and Cecilia, meanwhile, were coiling belts of ammunition for a heavy machine gun into a large carry-all, with Hank having slung the weapon in question onto his huge muscular shoulder, and Cecilia having dumped dozens of clips of pistol and rifle ammunition into a bulging backpack that she had secured onto her shoulders. Dani was policing up packages of plastic explosives that could each have put a sizeable dent in any one of a dozen city blocks and piling them into yet another carry-all when she saw Madrox and Kitty appear at the doorway to the chamber.

"Dig in, guys – there's plenty for everyone," she said, before she frowned, confusion seeming to wash across her face for a moment or two. "Hey… where've you two been, anyway?"

"Um…" Kitty began, trying to think of a decent excuse.

"Lookout duty," Madrox finished quickly, a note of panic seeming to echo loudly from his throat – or at least it did to Kitty, anyway. "Can't be too careful about the Russkies, after all."

Dani raised an eyebrow, and Kitty was sure that she had seen right through the flimsy excuse without even trying hard. "Right," she said, scepticism seeming to flow freely off her words. "Of course." Then she nodded over to where a stack of automatic pistols was gleaming in the low light. "Thought you might be interested in those, Kitty – they're the kind the Spetznaz use. Even found some hollow-point ammunition and throwing knives for you, too." Then she smiled at Madrox, pointed over to a pile of haphazardly-organised rifles, and said "And for you, sir, we also found some pretty decent guns. They're standard Russkie army issue, but they pack a hell of a punch. Take a look." She gestured to a ragged dent in one wall, with chunks of plaster heaped on the dusty floorboards in front of it. "I took it upon myself to give one of them a test drive, and that was the result. Like what you see?"

"Oh yeah," Madrox replied. "You bet your pretty ass I do."

Dani's eyebrow rose again. "You're a real fucking charmer, Madrox, you know that? I honestly don't know what this girl sees in you."

"Which girl?" Madrox said hastily, before jerking a thumb at Kitty. "This girl? I don't know what you mean. Do you know what she means, Kitty?"

"No idea," Kitty said, knowing this was about as sturdy a defence as cardboard was against armour-piercing shells. Stupid fucking Madrox, she thought sourly. He really knew just how to manoeuvre himself right into a corner when he didn't need to. "I certainly don't see anything attractive about you, man."

"I saw you kiss him when we got here, honey," Dani said, a crooked smile creasing her lips. "Then you two disappear off together and come back looking all red in the face? Doesn't take a genius to figure out what you were doing, you know. You were either making out or fucking like bunnies, weren't you?" She grinned. "It's okay to admit it, you know – no shame in fucking somebody for pleasure, after all."

"We were not fucking like bunnies!" Kitty snapped, suddenly embarrassed and angry with herself. "We were keeping lookout, that's all. Nothing happened."

"Whatever you say," Dani laughed, before she turned around to face the other three rebels, and shouted "Hey, guys – Kitty and Jamie were out back having casual sex while we were doing all the work!"

Hank bellowed with laughter and grinned broadly, his slightly elongated canines glittering in the moonlight flowing through the shattered windows to his right. "They wouldn't be the first to do something like that – would they, darling?"

"Nope," Cecilia chuckled. "Hank and I did it when we were on the run from a whole Russkie division. Pretty exciting, actually."

"Thanks for that image, Cecilia," Madrox said. "I really needed to imagine you and Hank doing it. That's gonna keep me up nights, you realise that?"

"That was sort of the plan, Jamie," Hank replied, winking. "We enjoyed it, anyway, so that's the main thing. I just hope it was as good for you and Kitty as it was for us."

 _Kill me now,_ Kitty thought desperately. And as if they wanted to grant her wish, Soviet rifles began to lay down a crackling barrage of fire somewhere down the street – not incredibly close to their position, true, but close enough to be dangerous. Instantly, the smiles disappeared from Dani, Hank and Cecilia's faces, and they immediately picked up their bags and moved towards the door of the building. Sam rose from his seat and pumped a couple of shells into his shotgun, no sign of emotion crossing his face.

"It's game time," he said coldly.

* * *

 

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock stood with her arms crossed in the Empire State Building's functional, but not spectacular, surgical facility, which was adjacent to the experimental rooms that Dr MacTaggert had had installed when she had been brought to New York from Edinburgh. Behind thick bullet-proof glass in front of her she watched as Dr MacTaggert stitched up the torn, bloody scalp of Val Cooper, dabbing away at the sticky hair with alcohol-soaked swabs and carefully pulling together the edges of the wound. Elisabeth folded her arms and shifted her stance slightly, her brightly-shined boots clicking softly on the tiled floor, and wondered if Cooper was going to be lucid enough to give her any information at all. Of course, the fact that the rebels' operations had been sufficiently crippled to allow a brief relaxation Soviet patrols and vigilance meant that interrogating her wasn't an immediately pressing concern, but Elisabeth wanted to get as much information out of Cooper as she could before she threw her to the wolves in the local gulag. She also wanted to get as much information out of her as possible without having to resort to Major Grey's less than subtle interrogation methods, since she had no desire to repeat the Logan situation (and she suspected that Major Grey's position on the matter was likely the same, even though her sadistic treatment of Logan might have suggested otherwise).

Deciding to take a closer look at her new "guest", Elisabeth pushed open the door to the infirmary, and walked over to the chair that Cooper was strapped to, whose bloodshot eyes were looking around the room dazedly and not completely registering where she was. "How is she, Doctor?" Elisabeth asked, guessing what the answer would be.

"Physically, she's fine," Dr MacTaggert replied, as she wiped away some more dried blood. "I had to sedate her to get this done, though, just in case. I doubt she'd have tried to escape, but better to be safe than sorry, right?"

"Indeed," Elisabeth pondered. "Would you say that she is ready for interrogation yet?"

"I'd give her another few hours of rest yet, Comrade-Colonel," Dr MacTaggert said. "The girl's just been shot. I doubt she'd be able to tell ye her own name right now."

"We'll see about that," Elisabeth said in a low voice, before she bent herself at the waist and looked directly into Cooper's vacant eyes. "We're going to have a talk soon, you and I. And we're going to learn what it is that you can tell me. Do you understand?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best reply that Val Cooper could manage at that point was a wordless mumble that Elisabeth thought was intended to be a defiant refusal to co-operate. Elisabeth smiled thinly, and took Cooper's chin in between her finger and thumb, angling her head upwards slightly. "Do you know James Logan?" she asked, and was gratified to feel a spark of recognition ignite in Cooper's dulled brain. "Yes, I thought you might. He tried to resist me, too – and I broke him like a twig. Right at this moment he's through those doors –" and she gestured to the heavy black-painted doors that stood behind her like a pair of hanging judges "– and Doctor MacTaggert is cutting him to pieces to help the Soviet war effort. You have nothing left, Val. Nobody will come and save you. You might as well give in."

"All right, Colonel, that's enough," Dr MacTaggert said sharply. "I won't have ye intimidating my patient."

"Fine words, Doctor," Elisabeth snapped, "especially coming from somebody who specialises in vivisection."

"Ye don't need to remind me of what I've become, Comrade," Doctor MacTaggert retorted, fixing Elisabeth with a black scowl. "I still took an oath to protect my patients, and I won't let ye take that away from me, too."

Elisabeth smiled thinly. "Of course not. We all need our little placebos to make the world taste a little sweeter, after all." She nodded towards the black doors. "While we're on the subject, however – how is the Logan research progressing?"

Dr MacTaggert's scowl deepened. "Follow me," she said in a blunt tone. She moved towards the two doors behind Elisabeth, and then pushed one of them open in order to move into the laboratory beyond. Elisabeth padded after her silently, keeping her fists clenched at either side of her hips as she walked past rows of bubbling test-tubes and frozen cell samples. Dr MacTaggert came to a halt abruptly and gestured to a metal framework hanging off one wall. "Ye wanted results, Comrade-Colonel? There's your results."

Elisabeth turned her gaze to see what the doctor was pointing at, and saw Logan's nearly-naked body strung up on the metal framework, with tubes running in and out of his body at regular intervals. Blood oozed from each of them, swirling down towards whirring machines on the floor of the laboratory, which then returned it back to him discoloured with sedatives. If the doctor was expecting a reaction from her, she was to be disappointed – Elisabeth's stony expression did not change. "How close are you to replicating Logan's healing powers?" she asked, her arms folded neatly across her chest. "I'd hate to think this was all in vain, after all."

"Close enough," Dr MacTaggert replied blackly. "This is the only way I could get continuous analysis of his abilities – after the Darkholme mess, I thought it was better to get it right first time. But ye should have your super-soldiers soon enough."

"Good," Elisabeth said, before she turned on her heel and began making her way out of the laboratory. "See that it ends up being sooner rather than later, Doctor. I don't like failure."

Swivelling on her heel, she marched out of the lab and towards the elevator that would take her back up to her own command level. She grimaced at the thought of Major Grey being left to run the place while she made this little detour, but she decided that desperate times called for similarly desperate measures. And – despite her grating arrogance and smug condescension – Major Grey was definitely a competent commander; Elisabeth had seen the battle reports of the occasions when Major Grey had taken command of certain Spetznaz operations and rendered the enemy helpless within days, sometimes even within hours. The reports seemed to suggest that she had used her considerable psychic abilities to shatter enemy morale, and turn otherwise determined, resolute soldiers into weak, mewling victims – and from what she had seen of Major Grey so far, that didn't seem to be too implausible.

The elevator slowed as it came to a halt just outside her office, and the doors hissed open, revealing Lieutenant Drake standing crisply to attention, his boots clicking together sharply as he saw his commanding officer emerging into the corridor. "At ease, Lieutenant," Elisabeth said, waving a hand at him absently. "Report."

Lieutenant Drake swallowed in a nervous kind of way, and said "Major Grey decided to redeploy some of our forces while you were talking to Dr MacTaggert – she moved some of our armoured units into New Jersey and shifted some troops towards Brooklyn."

Elisabeth's eyes narrowed to burning slits. "I see. And where is she now?"

"Your office, Comrade-Colonel." Elisabeth could sense an almost tangibly bitter sensation of fear wafting away from the lieutenant's mind. Normally she would have enjoyed the taste of it, but she had bigger fish to fry at this point. Marching resolutely towards the doors of her office, she flung them open angrily and stormed inside, fury billowing off her brain like wood smoke. When she did so, she saw Major Grey sat at her desk, her cap laid on the wooden surface beside her along with her gloves, and a map of New York spread out in front of her. She did not even bother to look up when Elisabeth slammed a fist down on the desk, the sound of it echoing through the room like the sound of a hammer striking a bell.

"Long live the revolution, Comrade-Colonel," she said absently, as she marked some new Soviet positions on the map with a needle-sharp pencil and a steel ruler.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" Elisabeth snarled, enraged, barely able to restrain the urge to yank Major Grey to her feet with both hands. "This is my command, Major. I did not ask you to redeploy my troops, and I do not appreciate having my orders rescinded behind my back, either."

"For the good of the military effort here, Comrade-Colonel, I think you ought to," Major Grey snapped back, her green eyes aflame. "I received reports that a large arms cache in Brooklyn had suffered a radio blackout, so I moved some troops in to investigate. And as for the armoured units, Comrade-Captain Worthington requested that we send some reinforcements for his operations in New Jersey, so I had to move some tanks and artillery forward to his position."

Elisabeth scowled inwardly. She should have known that Major Grey would have a watertight excuse to hand – it was practically standard practice for a KGB officer to have alibis coming out of their ears. One rule for them, and one rule for the rest of us, Elisabeth thought sourly, before she composed herself and then gestured towards her chair. "Very well – you're relieved, Major. Step aside, please."

Major Grey spread her hands. "As you wish." As she stood and stepped away from the chair, she said "You'd do well to keep my considerations in mind, Comrade-Colonel – I don't want us to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, after all."

* * *

 

From her concealed observation point underneath a manhole cover, Kitty watched the numberless Soviet transports rumbling to and from the truck depot at the base of the Empire State Building, and felt another cold shiver of fear running down her spine like ice water. Around the base of the building were numerous guard posts and patrolling Soviet troops with snarling Alsatian guard dogs, with machine-gun emplacements studding the perimeter like jagged spikes of steel. Ducking quickly back down into the sewer, she dulled the splash of her landing as much as she could and turned to face the rest of her group.

"So how's it looking up there?" Madrox asked, looking desperately for some positive news in Kitty's worried expression.

"Nuts," Kitty said, shrugging. "They've got that place locked down so tight I don't think even a fart could escape. Besides which, even if we did get in, I doubt we'd get anywhere without being able to speak Russkie."

"Let me do the talking," Hank said. "I don't know a huge amount of Russian, but I know enough to pass myself off as one if I'm questioned. If I could find a uniform, I could say you were all my prisoners."

"Well, that's one problem solved," Madrox muttered acidly. "We only got another five billion to go, and then we're all set. You see any manhole covers inside the fences, Kit?"

"One," Kitty replied. "Although I'd be real surprised if it was still used – the Ivans have probably welded it shut by now."

Cecilia put one hand to her chin thoughtfully. "Looks like we'll have to hijack ourselves a truck, then," she said, with a wry grin. "Carjacking was never one of my strong points, but I'll try anything once."

"Okay – sounds like a plan to me," Kitty said, before she padded down the tunnel and pointed into the gloom at its end. "We'll have to withdraw back to a safer spot, though – trying to ambush a Russkie truck here would be like putting a gun to our heads and asking the Ivans to pull the trigger. Maybe we can use those Russian-language skills of yours to help us out, huh, Hank?"

"I certainly hope so," Hank said, cracking his oversized knuckles and flipping the safety of his rifle on and off a couple of times. "What do you think, Dani? Sam?"

Dani shrugged, and then slapped a fresh clip of bullets into each of her pistols. "I'll go with it if it gets us inside the perimeter."

"Guess I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Sam added sullenly, slotting some more shells into his gun and snapping it closed with a loud click. "I still think this is bug-fuck crazy, but y'all seem to think it's gonna work, so what the hell. If I gotta die, I'm takin' as many of those fuckin' assholes out with me as I can."

"Good to hear it," Kitty said with as much confidence as she could muster. "Hank, Cecilia – you take point; see if you can draw out any Russkies in our way. Dani and Sam, you go on ahead; Jamie and I will take the rearguard."

Dani smiled, and winked. "Okay, honey. Guess we all need time with our boyfriends, don't we?"

"Yeah, I guess we do," Kitty replied in a sarcastic tone, flipping a middle finger in Dani's direction. "Will you get going, please?"

"Sure," Dani replied, hefting her pistols and splashing towards where Sam was standing. "Come on, Sam; let's leave the lovebirds to it…"

When she and Sam had moved sufficiently far down the tunnel that she was sure she wouldn't be overheard or gawped at, Kitty turned to Madrox and opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it. "Don't say anything, Kit," he said softly. "Let's just try to stay alive, huh?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Kitty murmured. "Don't die on me, Jamie, okay?"

"I'll try my best," Madrox smiled. He kissed her then, slipping his hands into hers as he did so. "Wouldn't want to deprive you of my brilliant company, after all."

Kitty laughed. Whatever else Madrox was, he certainly knew how to defuse a nasty situation. And right now, that was exactly what she needed…


	9. Steel Rain

Kitty clicked her pistol's safety catch on and off with her thumb as she scanned the street in front of her, surrounded by greasy pieces of alley trash and squeaking rats that insisted on investigating her toes at regular intervals, no matter how many times she kicked at them to shoo them away. She did briefly consider skewering one and letting the rest of them pick at its body, but she decided against it, for the simple reason that the noise it would cause was something she could do without. So she simply crouched down behind a garbage can and let them skitter around her feet in a furry carpet of filth. Across the street from her, she could see Hank and Cecilia doing pretty much the same thing in their hiding place, although she could also see that the two of them were managing much more easily with their situation than she was, simply letting the rats flow around them without bothering to even look down.

Benefits of practice, I guess, she thought with a slight touch of envy. Glancing to her right she saw Madrox slipping some bullets into his new Russian sidearm, and smiled gently. "You like that, don't you?" she whispered, quietly amused. "Is it because it's shiny? I have some tin foil in my pocket if you'd like that too."

"Keep trying, Kitty. You'll be funny one day," Madrox fired back at her, his voice kept equally as low as hers as he kept one eye on her and one eye on the street. Just as he was about to say something else, a truck began to rumble down the shattered road, its heavy cargo clattering as the truck crushed scattered rubble underneath its heavy wheels. "Time to earn your stripes, kid," Madrox told her, nodding towards the approaching vehicle. "Think happy thoughts."

"Easy for you to say," Kitty muttered as she gathered strength in her legs, pushed herself to her feet and began to run towards the oncoming truck, its headlights flaring searing yellow as it thundered along the street. As she neared it, Kitty could smell the tang of petrol and motor oil, could hear the squeal of tyres against tarmac, and could see the driver of the truck keeping his attention completely focused on the road in front of him. _Good,_ Kitty decided. _Maybe this will work after all…_

Jumping forwards as fast as she could, she held her breath and phased through the truck's front grille before the driver could swerve away, and emerged through the dashboard into the truck's cab. The driver's stunned expression filled her with satisfaction and relief – if she could see the man's face, it meant she hadn't been splattered across the front of the truck – and she used that momentary respite to grab the soldier's tunic by the lapels as she settled herself into the seat next to him, and then to shove him bodily through the door. The soldier shrieked noisily as he passed through the thick, solid steel and slammed into the road outside the truck's cab, crumpling on impact like a concertina. Kitty heard the stomach-churning sound of several of the soldier's bones shattering noisily, and tried her best to ignore them as she pushed her foot down hard on the truck's brake and grabbed its wheel in order to stop it from veering off and toppling a couple of lampposts. The truck bucked and screamed as it tried its hardest not to do as she was telling it, but Kitty kept her foot placed firmly on the brake even though she could almost feel her heart climbing out of her throat. Eventually, though, the truck squealed to a halt, tyre marks painting the road's surface like smears of charcoal on a dark, fragmented canvas, and Kitty was able to step out of the cab and beckon her squad-mates over. She took a deep breath as she did so, feeling her heart slowing to a more normal pace, and then leaned against the truck's side as her companions made their way from their covered firing positions, trying her best to look as if she had just been out for a leisurely Sunday drive.

"What took you guys so long?" she said as Madrox reached her, concern clearly etched on his normally jovial face. "You should've been here – I just had the most fun. You should try it sometime."

"I think I'll pass," Madrox replied, as he gestured to the crumpled form of the Soviet soldier that lay in a heap a few hundred feet back from where the truck was currently standing, "especially if that's the way you treat bad passengers." As he turned back to look at Kitty, Hank walked over to the soldier's body and began examining his uniform, stripping the man's jacket and trousers off him before dragging the limp form into a side alley. When he had done that, he put one muscular hand into the left arm of the jacket and cursed when it did not go more than halfway down the sleeve, his thick fingers bunching up as they reached the elbow.

"Problem?" Dani asked, redundantly.

Hank nodded. "It seems that way, yes. I can't fit into this thing – it'll split if I try to get my hands into it any further. I think somebody else is going to have to give this a try." He handed the slightly torn jacket to Madrox and continued "You look like the most likely candidate, Jamie."

"Me?" Madrox replied, his eyes bulging in surprise. "Why me?"

"It looks like it's more your size," Hank told him, flatly. "Look, don't worry about this, all right? I know for a fact that there are plenty of Americans who've joined the Soviet armed forces, so you wouldn't exactly be alone in not being able to speak Russian. Just nod, smile, and call everybody 'comrade', and you'll be home free, I promise."

"Easy for you to say, man," Madrox muttered as he took the jacket and trousers and began stripping off his fatigues so he could get the uniform on. "You're not the one who's going to get a bullet in the face if things go wrong."

"You know, I sincerely doubt that," Hank snapped sourly. "If things go wrong, we'll all be in very big trouble, so you won't exactly have to worry about dying alone."

"Comforting thought," Cecilia said as she moved towards the back of the truck and opened its tailgate, and then took a cursory look inside, assessing the truck's cargo with a single glance. "Better get moving, guys – this shipment of blankets isn't going to move itself, after all."

"Blankets?" Sam exclaimed, sounding a little surprised. "Didn't think the Ivans were ever that kind."

"Sometimes they can surprise you," Kitty told him, shrugging. "Doesn't happen very often, though." Then she moved towards the open tailgate and climbed in beside Cecilia. "Come on. Better get this over and done with, I guess."

When everybody else had moved into the rear of the truck, Madrox buttoned up his stolen tunic, climbed up into the driver's cab and turned the truck's ignition key, causing the engine to roar throatily into life. Shifting the gear-stick into reverse, he pulled the truck around and then slammed his foot down onto the accelerator pedal. "Hold on, guys," he called, unsure if any of them could hear him over the sound of the engine. "Here we go."

* * *

Elisabeth let the wind whisper across her cheeks as she walked around the fortifications at the base of the Empire State Building. It had been too long since she had felt cool, fresh air on her skin, so she intended to enjoy it as much as possible, even with the odious Major Grey in tow. The KGB officer had asked for a brief tour of the defensive positions that encircled the chief Soviet stronghold in New York, so, of course, Elisabeth had had to indulge her, as much as she hadn't wanted to. Adjusting her fur hat and greatcoat so that they hugged her head and figure more closely, she marched towards a guard's station and nodded to the woman inside the hut as the soldier straightened to attention in the blink of an eye, her heel slamming down on the floor of her hut with a loud clatter of strictly-maintained rubber against polished wood. "At ease, Comrade-Lieutenant Petrovna," Elisabeth said briefly, and the woman relaxed, releasing the butt of the rifle hanging from her right shoulder and putting both of her hands behind her back, her light blonde hair reflecting the cyclopean beams of the floodlights that periodically swept the perimeter of the base. Elisabeth could sense that she was clearly still uncomfortable because of Major Grey's presence, but that was to be understood – KGB officers did not exactly go out of their way to present a family-friendly image, after all. Clearly, Major Grey had noticed the soldier's unease as well, since she took that opportunity to step forwards, her gloved hands behind her back, and took in every aspect of the woman's appearance with a single glance.

"Good evening, Comrade Petrovna," she began, her honeyed tones seeming to Elisabeth as if they were the hovering blade of a guillotine. "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Petrovna replied, her voice not wavering despite the obvious, tangy fear that Elisabeth could feel radiating from her skull. "You are Major Jean Grey, of KGB intelligence."

"My reputation precedes me, I see," Major Grey said in a thoughtful tone, a hand touching her chin briefly. "Do you know why I'm here?"

"No, sir," Lieutenant Petrovna said. "Am I in trouble, sir?"

Major Grey smiled, like a snake mesmerising its prey. "No, Comrade Petrovna – if I had been here for you, we would not be having this conversation now; you would already be in a cattle truck on your way to Siberia."

Elisabeth felt a twist of anger boiling at the centre of her guts when she heard Major Grey speak those words, almost as if the KGB officer had spoken them to her. I don't appreciate you spreading fear among my troops, Major, she said psionically, making sure that the other woman could feel every ounce of her irritation and disdain. Do it again and I will have you sent back to Moscow in a suitcase, regardless of your KGB connections. That's a promise.

Major Grey simply smiled briefly as she felt Elisabeth's words splash against her frontal lobes, and altered her tack without missing a beat. "So tell me, Comrade… how are you finding it here in the United States? I hope you're enjoying your posting here - I used to live here in New York before I was transferred to the Kremlin, and I always enjoy coming back. It's a lovely city, don't you think?"

"I… have enjoyed working here, yes, sir," Lieutenant Petrovna said slowly, still obviously unsure of herself around not one, but two of her superior officers. The fact that neither of them were native speakers of her own language wouldn't exactly help her, either, Elisabeth realised. "It has been… interesting, to see a new country. I only wish we could just make all the Americans see that we are only trying to help them rise above the mess they have buried themselves into – we could avoid so much bloodshed that way."

"That's true," Major Grey agreed, "but if we have to fight to make our point, so be it. The Revolution needs brave men and women who are willing to die for what they believe in, after all. And I believe that if we believe in what we fight for, we will always win over our enemies, no matter how many of them there are. Do you believe that, Comrade Petrovna?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Petrovna said, nodding. "I do."

"Good. I'm pleased to hear it. Carry on, Comrade Petrovna." Major Grey saluted crisply, and then turned on one heel to walk towards the fortified gates that provided the single access point for all of the traffic going in and out of the Empire State Building. Elisabeth followed her at a brisk pace, and was once again reminded of how proud she was of this defensive achievement. Razor wire was coiled like blood-hungry vines around the fencing and machine-gun emplacements that flanked the gates, with concrete blocks positioned strategically just inside the fencing to prevent any particularly overzealous rebels from driving cars or trucks packed with explosives straight into anywhere delicate. In addition, claymore mines were positioned pointing towards the street, so that any attacking troops that managed to get through the blizzard of lead from the Soviet machine guns would be shredded by countless unforgiving steel ball bearings. In short, anybody attacking this base from the front would have to be either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to think they could have a hope in hell of succeeding. Before she reached them, however, she increased her pace so that she was alongside Major Grey, their boots clicking on the concrete almost in unison as she did so.

"Tell me, Major," she asked, "do you really believe any of what you just said?"

Major Grey turned to Elisabeth and jabbed a finger at her accusingly, her green eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. "Why? Don't you believe that, Colonel?"

Elisabeth smirked. "I believe that pep-talks aren't the only thing we need to maintain control of this country, Major. That's what I believe. SAFN may fill the proletariat's head with endless sugar-coated messages of how wonderful we are, but you don't exactly see them rushing to embrace us with open arms, do you?"

"The majority of them have accepted us. The rest just need a little more persuasion," Major Grey retorted angrily, before she abruptly changed the subject by pointing at the fortified entrance to the compound. "How often are the guards changed here?"

"Once every hour," Elisabeth replied, glad for once not to get into an argument with her insufferable colleague. "We rotate the shifts for guard duty frequently, so any one soldier is not assigned here more than once a month."

"Good," Major Grey said, nodding in approval as she rocked back and forth on her heels for a second or two. "This is very impressive, Colonel. Are there any other entrance points to the base?"

Elisabeth shook her head. "No. There is a sewer manhole inside the fences, but it's been welded closed, and booby-trapped with several pounds of plastic explosive. There's no chance of anything getting through it."

Major Grey smiled with only a faint trace of amusement flickering in her eyes. "I wouldn't be so certain of that, Colonel. You might just end up being surprised –" Her head suddenly turned towards one of the trucks arriving at the front gate, and her pupils flared wide with predatory interest. She began marching towards the truck as it was stopped by one of the guards manning the gate, her gloved fists clenching tightly and starting to glow with faint traces of fire-coloured energy. Elisabeth blinked in vague surprise as she watched the other woman suddenly start stalking purposefully towards the truck's cab, and then quickly closed the gap between herself and the truck. Whatever Major Grey had noticed, she decided, she needed to see it for herself as well, just to be on the safe side. When she got to the driver's cab, she saw a young man in a slightly dirty uniform sitting nervously in his seat as Major Grey looked over his truck. Instantly, she pitied him.

"What's your cargo?" Major Grey asked him in a clipped tone, her green eyes skewering him with their steely gaze.

"Prisoners, sir," the young man said, a quaver in his voice giving away his true emotions. "Rebel leaders that need to be interrogated."

"I see," Major Grey said thoughtfully, nodding as she tapped her perfect chin with one gloved finger. "Carry on, mister…?"

"Foster," the young man replied. "Harry Foster."

Elisabeth could feel that he was concealing something, but the man's peculiar psychic presence (which seemed… fragmented, somehow, and didn't allow her any solid purchase in his thoughts at all) prevented her from ascertaining exactly what that was. No matter. She'd doubtlessly find out a lot more when she interrogated the prisoners he was bringing in. She turned to watch the truck rumble towards the depot built into the base of the tower in front of her, when Major Grey simply raised a finger towards the truck and its passengers.

"Kill them all," she hissed.

* * *

 

Kitty heard the rattling crack of AK-47 fire starting up behind the truck, bullets beginning to clatter off the truck's raised tailgate, and shouted "Everybody cross your fingers!" as she touched the truck's camouflage-painted surface and willed herself into intangibility. She knew that whatever touched her when she was phased became phased with her, but she wasn't sure if she could affect people indirectly (and since Jamie was in the truck's cab, that was the only way this was going to work). When she saw that nobody flew out of the truck and broke their neck on the tarmac beneath the truck's wheels, she counted her action as a minor success. She felt the truck's speed increase as the friction between its tyres and the ground lessened drastically, the vehicle careening towards the covered truck depot as dozens of Russian soldiers surged after it, their rifles vomiting almost endless streams of bullets towards its fast disappearing tail lights.

As the truck neared the entrance to the depot, Kitty risked phasing her head through its side, just to get a better idea of what was going on. The depot was likewise crawling with Russian troops, but she thought she knew a way of escaping them, at least temporarily. Retreating back into cover and then reaching through the back wall of the truck's cab, Kitty appeared through Madrox's chest and, before he could find the presence of mind to have a heart attack, said "The kids are getting restless. I think you might need to talk to them." And with that, she pulled her head back through his body and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him through the wall of the cab and into the area where the rest of the ragtag rebels were crouching. As the truck lurched violently without anybody to steer it, Kitty cried "Hold your breath, guys – and grab onto me!" As every person in the truck grasped a part of her arms, Kitty concentrated hard and let them all phase out of the truck as it ploughed straight into a rank of half-tracks, a huge explosion ripping through the depot as cans of petrol ignited and sent rivers of flame snaking through the entire area.

Madrox blinked, and whistled. "Man, Kit, you sure do know how to make an entrance."

"We're not out of the woods yet," Hank said as he noticed a small squad of Russian troops moving through the flames. "We need to get out of here, and quickly. Our only chance is if we keep moving." Then he turned to Kitty and said "Get us below ground, Kitty, and quickly."

"Okay," Kitty said, shrugging. "Hold on, guys…"


	10. Crazy Like A Fox

Kitty tried, without success, to block out the banshee screech of the alarm klaxon. It gnawed at her ear drums and made her wish she could roll over and put a pillow over her head to dull the noise. Unfortunately, though, she was nowhere near her own bed, and the closest thing she had to a pillow was her battered flak jacket – and there was no way in hell she was going to take that off right now. She and the rest of her ragtag squad were crouched in a small alcove below ground level, a recess filled with junk and metallic garbage which looked uncomfortably like mangled, bloodstained surgical tools. Kitty had to wonder what they'd been operating on that would bend stainless steel so effortlessly.

"What the hell are the Ivans doing down here?" Cecilia muttered, as if she could hear Kitty's thoughts. Then, she risked a glimpse around the corner of the alcove. "Coast's clear for now, guys. Come on – let's go." Moving as quickly as they could, almost crouching so that they presented a smaller target, Kitty and the rest of the group followed her down the corridor, their boots thumping quietly on the gleaming white tiling of the hallway. Sam was clutching the barrel of his shotgun so tightly that Kitty feared he might make his knuckles burst through the skin, while Dani was simply glancing quickly around her as if to reassure herself that she and the rest of her comrades were still alive, and hadn't been riddled with bullets yet. Madrox, on the other hand, was still trying to keep a smile on his face, even if by this time it was severely frayed and haggard, and didn't bear any real resemblance to the smiles he'd given her earlier.

 _Understandable, really,_  Kitty thought sourly.  _Life and death situations will do that to a guy…_

Brushing that thought aside for the moment, she glanced up at the wall beside her and saw a set of directions bolted to the wall, denoting different areas of the lower levels. Unfortunately they were all in Russian script, and so they didn't mean a lot to her. "Hank," she hissed, "can you read these?"

"I can try," Hank answered, glancing quickly about himself before making his way over to where the directions were positioned. Standing up to his full height, so that he towered over Kitty like a mythical beast, he ran a finger down the board and murmured a translation to himself as he did so. When he had finished doing that, he turned around and dropped to one knee, making sure that everybody else followed suit as he hefted his heavy machine gun into a vertical position. "We're two floors too high," he said. "The prison level and its medical facilities are further underground." Then he glanced at Kitty with a wry smile on his bloodstained face. "Kitty, I think you know what you have to do."

Kitty nodded, and held out her arms for each comrade to grasp. "Here we go again, guys," she said, the humour that she might have found in the situation beforehand draining out of her words, like blood from a corpse. "Don't let go." She kept her eyes open as she phased herself and her squad through the floor, watching pipes and concrete pass through her slender frame, and through those of Hank, Madrox, Cecilia, Dani and Sam. It was only when she looked at Madrox that she noticed that he had kept his eyes open as well, and that he was keeping his gaze firmly locked on her. As they went lower and lower through the floor, he winked at her, and mouthed something that she supposed was meant to be encouraging (she'd never been good at reading lips, so she couldn't tell what it was he was trying to say), so she simply smiled back at him and tried to justify his confidence in her by keeping all of the squad alive until they reached the next floor down. When their feet touched the tiling, Kitty went solid again for a few moments in order to catch her breath, and then re-phased to make the trip down to the next floor. When she had done that, she, let go of her comrades' hands and quickly drew both of her pistols. Whatever else happened, she didn't want to go out unprepared. "Where to now, Hank?" she asked quietly.

"Down the corridor to the right, and then we take a left," Hank said. "Cecilia, perhaps you'd better take point. I'd be surprised if the Ivans haven't got some heavy artillery protecting that area."

Cecilia nodded without a word, evidently knowing that her strange force-field was the best way of ensuring that the squad had a decent amount of protection from a frontal assault. Moving to the front of the small team, she cocked her rifle and began padding slowly down the corridor, looking to the left and right with every pace, keeping her eyes on any potential exit points for Russian soldiers. Kitty began to follow suit, and as she did so, she saw Madrox emerge from her peripheral vision. "Hi," she whispered. "I didn't catch what you were saying to me just now. Mind filling me in?"

Madrox chuckled, the sound coming from his dry throat seeming like the rustle of dead leaves. "I said your ass is the best ass I've ever seen," he said, brushing a grubby hand against her charcoal-streaked cheek. "And I meant it, too. It's really cute."

Kitty fought the urge to laugh out loud. "Oh, shut up, you fucking idiot. Is that all you can think of?"

"Just telling it like it is, Kit," Madrox replied, keeping one eye on his surroundings even as he grinned at her. Then his expression changed, becoming harder, more serious, and he went on "Might not get another chance, you know?"

"Thinking like that will get you dead, Jamie," Dani interrupted abruptly, nodding down the corridor in the direction that the medical facilities were signposted. "Let's get this over with."

"Good idea," Kitty said, taking a deep breath. "Everybody locked and loaded?"

"As much as I'll ever be, honey," Sam muttered, his cold eyes beginning to glitter with something that Kitty couldn't quite identify, but which made her feel extremely uneasy nevertheless. She hoped that he wouldn't come apart at the seams right when she and the rest of his fellow soldiers needed him the most.

"Let's get going," Cecilia said resolutely. "Time's a-wasting, guys."

* * *

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock was shielded from the impact of the alarm klaxon in her office, but the pulsing sensation it produced still managed to penetrate her reinforced walls, giving her a dull but persistent headache as it did so. Fortunately, she was largely able to ignore it while she co-ordinated her troops' movements through the building with short, sharp telepathic commands – she had mobilised every single soldier in the building into trying to find the rebel filth who had managed to infiltrate her stronghold, and had ordered a scorched earth policy; in other words, none of them were to be left alive. Shot on sight, they would take any secrets they uncovered to a shallow grave, and her authority would be maintained.

Which was just as well – she knew that with two high-ranking rebel leaders in her custody, it was very likely that this was a rescue mission of some kind, and thus it could not be allowed to succeed. Capturing rebel leaders and then allowing them to be set free by their comrades was not exactly good procedure. On the other hand, she still needed to protect all of the other pieces of sensitive information that were stored in her headquarters, so she had surrounded the records and computers with heavily-armed Spetznaz troops, who would protect that information with their lives.

Elisabeth was acutely aware, too, that how she handled this breach of security was important for her own well-being – with a KGB officer in the building, and present at the time that the infiltration had occurred, it was of paramount importance that she resolved this situation as soon as she could. Otherwise, she could very well find herself scratching out the rest of her miserable existence as a prisoner in Siberia; and considering how she and Major Grey had got on so far, that seemed more and more likely the longer this was drawn out. It didn't help that Major Grey was currently sat across from her, leaning back in her chair and regarding Elisabeth with a wide, smug grin. Elisabeth could tell that Major Grey was enjoying every minute of this, and was taking great pleasure out of watching her sweat.  _KGB bastards never change_ , she reflected sourly.

It gave her great relief to see Lieutenant Drake entering her office, loaded rifle in hand, and she broke off her telepathic communication with half a dozen squads of soldiers in order to talk to him face-to-face. "Status report," she said shortly, not bothering to chastise him for forgetting to salute or for not standing to attention. There would be time enough for that later.

"We… we lost visual contact with the rebels almost as soon as they entered the base – the surveillance equipment in the lower levels is malfunctioning, somehow," Drake said, trying to disguise a nervous quaver in his voice. "The fire in the truck depot is under control, but the rebels themselves are gone. I ordered three squads of troops to take one elevator down to the prison level, and another three squads to start sweeping the floors between there and the ground one at a time. They'll all be moving through the lower levels right now, so the rebels won't be able to hide from them for much longer."

"Good," Elisabeth said. "Make sure that you push the rebels towards the med-lab."

Lieutenant Drake cocked an eyebrow curiously. "But, sir… that's where the rebel prisoners are."

"Exactly," Elisabeth replied, smiling icily. "Move another squad of troops down to Dr MacTaggert's lab, take up an ambush position there, and wait for further instructions. I want you to personally oversee this, Comrade Drake – I don't want any failures."

"Yes, Comrade-Colonel," Lieutenant Drake said, trying to disguise the obvious apprehension in his voice, and mostly succeeding – if Elisabeth hadn't been a telepath, she probably would have missed the telltale signs that told her he was petrified.

She wasn't the only one that could sense that, however. Before Lieutenant Drake could leave the room, Major Grey got to her feet, the smug grin fading from her porcelain-pale features as she did so, and said "Stay where you are, Lieutenant," making the young man freeze in place, seeming even more terrified than he had been a moment beforehand.

"Yes, Major?" he asked, nervously. Major Grey's lips drew tight in a thin smile, and she spread her gloved hands wide.

"Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable if I were to lend you some assistance?" she suggested helpfully. "I have a  _little_  combat experience, after all."

"Um… yes, sir," Drake said, his hands clenching visibly tighter and his legs struggling to remain still as one of his kneecaps started juddering spasmodically. "Of… of course."

"Good," Major Grey said, cracking her knuckles one-by-one and flexing her fingers inside their black leather gloves. "Follow me, Lieutenant." Striding across the office to its entrance, Major Grey drew her automatic pistol and flung the doors wide open, before she turned to look back at the still-stuck-in-place Lieutenant, a sly smile plastered across her face. "We have some rats to kill, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, sir," Drake replied, sounding a little more confident as he did so. "Lead the way."

Before he could leave, though, Elisabeth caught him with one last, heavily-shielded telepathic message, making absolutely sure (as sure as she could be with a telepath like Major Grey, anyway) that she and her adjutant would be the only two people included on this conversation.  _Is Comrade Rasputin ready to be redeployed?_  she asked, urgently.

 _Yes, Comrade-Colonel,_  Drake thought back to her as he jogged out of her office.  _He's absolutely ready. Should I -_

 _Good,_  Elisabeth mused, brushing her adjutant's thoughts aside without a pause.  _See that Comrade Grey crosses his path. We'll see how the immovable object reacts to the unstoppable force…_

* * *

Logan blinked himself awake, fighting against the sedatives in his system. He supposed that his body was building up an immunity to them, finally, but it still made him feel sluggish as hell, and didn't exactly give him a good sense of what was going on. It didn't help that there was a howling klaxon going off somewhere outside, which stung his enhanced hearing to an almost unbearable degree. Ahead of him he could see the woman who'd been holding him here all this time hurriedly gathering up test-tubes and files and stuffing them into storage cupboards, her white lab coat flapping around her ankles as she did so, and he decided to try and get some kind of clue as to what was going on here.

"Lady," he slurred, the right side of his mouth not responding to anything he asked of it, "you mind tellin' me what the hell's happenin' out there?"

Momentarily alarmed, Dr MacTaggert spun on the point of one heel and raised the muzzle of the Russian Army pistol in her hand towards Logan, her brown eyes narrowed to slits behind the rectangular frames of her glasses. "I'd be shuttin' up if I were ye, lad," she hissed coldly. "I doubt even ye could survive a bullet in the head."

Logan snorted, trying to sound as brashly confident as he could. With all the drugs in his system, that was tougher than it sounded, but he decided he'd give it a shot anyway. Anything to stick it to this sycophantic bitch, after all. "I'll try anything once, lady," he said, twisting his cracked lips into a small, defiant smile.

That smile died as quickly as it had emerged when Dr MacTaggert swung the gun's muzzle away from his face and pointed it towards a half-conscious Valerie Cooper, who moaned through unresponsive lips and struggled to break the straps that were bonding her to her plain wooden chair. "I'm sure ye would," Dr MacTaggert sneered, "but are ye willin' t' risk this lass's life as well?" She clicked off the pistol's safety catch and took careful aim at the centre of Val's forehead, and smiled with poisonous satisfaction as Logan hung his head in defeat. "Good lad," she continued, turning up the gun's muzzle and flipping the safety catch back on. "I'd hate t' ruin all the hard work I did on that girl, after all."

Just then, there came a clatter of rubber-soled boots on the tiled floor of the med-lab, and from his position on the wall Logan could see a large squad of Russian troops pour in through the sliding doors behind Dr MacTaggert. At the head of the squad was a woman he recognised as Major Grey – the woman who had tortured so much vital information out of him with her psychic powers and her scalpels. He felt a shudder building inside his body, and grimaced darkly, forcing it down with every last ounce of strength he had left. He wouldn't show this sick bitch any more weaknesses – of that he was certain.

In any case, it wasn't her that he was most concerned about – behind her stood the whole reason he was even here in the first place, the towering metal monster who had ripped apart his resistance cell's base and cut a ragged hole in the resistance's manpower. Worse, the steel giant seemed to have been augmented somehow – his forearms were bandaged heavily and bulged a little at the wrist, but he still carried himself with the immense pride in his duty that seemed to be a staple requirement for any Red Army soldier, his almost placid features displaying no sign of pain or discomfort. Logan guessed that the monster's hulking steel form protected the giant from anything like that, but he wouldn't have put good money on it. As he pondered the point, however, he saw Major Grey walk over to where Dr MacTaggert was standing, her hips swinging seductively beneath the folds of her greatcoat, and then point towards the door of the med-lab.

"I suggest you leave, Doctor. Now," Major Grey said in a tone that made her words sound like anything but a suggestion. As she spoke, the metal monster shadowed her, towering over the suddenly frail-looking Dr MacTaggert and underlining just who was really in charge here. As Dr MacTaggert backed away out of the med-lab's sliding doors, all the while keeping her eyes on the steel-skinned giant, Major Grey began directing the other members of her squad to take up positions all around the med-lab. As she noticed Logan watching her keenly, she smiled – a gesture that almost froze Logan's blood in his veins. "Hello, Mr Logan," she purred. "I believe you know Comrade Rasputin?"

"Been introduced to him once," Logan grunted, every word a struggle for him to pronounce. Then his nose twitched, a familiar, distasteful scent carrying itself to his nostrils. "You wanna show your face, Drake? Or am I gonna have to come down and find you?"

As Logan spoke, he saw Comrade Drake step from behind the metal giant, his rifle raised and pointed directly at the centre of Logan's skull. "Shut the fuck up, hairball," he snarled, "before I perforate your face."

Logan grinned lopsidedly, amused despite his grim surroundings, his bloodstained face lending his smile a gruesome quality. "Wouldn't dream of doing anythin' else… comrade."

"Good," Lieutenant Drake snapped, as he turned and pointed towards a group of rank and file troopers that was milling around near the entrance to the med-lab. "You men – fan out by squads and draw the rebels in here. We'll see who's smarter here."

The troopers began to move out of the med-lab and into the corridor, their boots tramping on the tiles and making Logan's super-sensitive ears ring painfully. Major Grey noticed his discomfort and stepped forwards, cupping his face in her hand. "Are you hurting, Mr Logan?" she asked, false concern oozing from her every word. "I'm sure I can do something about that…"

And before he knew it, Logan felt a sharp, stabbing pain behind his eyes… and then felt nothing more.

* * *

Kitty fired a rattling burst of fire from her rifle, causing a few of her pursuers to fold into doughy lumps of ripped meat, then turned and rounded a corner to follow the rest of her squad. Dani had been hit in the left shoulder and was bleeding profusely, splashing large droplets of blood onto the pristine white floor, while Sam had been grazed by a couple of bullets and had had long creases of flesh knocked out of his chest and left thigh. Kitty didn't like the way that he was becoming prone to breathing in long, ragged wheezes, either, so she had had Cecilia try to act as a screen for the wounded, her force-field comfortably deflecting anything that came towards her – or as comfortably as possible, anyway; Cecilia kept grunting with pain every time a bullet bounced off her protective field, as if she was feeling the pain of the impact through thin air. Kitty shook her head and tried not to think too hard about it; as long as the force-field kept Sam and Dani alive that little bit longer, all she knew was that it was doing its job.

"Lovely fucking war, huh?" Madrox said sardonically, nursing a wound of his own on his right forearm, as half a dozen others just like him surrounded the group and acted as both point men and rearguard. Kitty and he had realised almost immediately that if they could use Madrox's abilities to soak up any other enemy fire that didn't get absorbed by Cecilia's force-field, they'd have a much better chance of survival. Madrox hadn't been too keen to feel his dupes getting chewed to bits by automatic weapons fire, of course, but he'd recognised that this was their best shot at leaving this hellhole alive.

"You really have a talent for stating the obvious, Mr Madrox," Hank said, keeping one watchful eye on his wife and another on the corridor ahead of him, his heavy machine gun trained on the doorways from which enemy soldiers could spring at any moment. Then he nodded towards an indented set of clear doors to the left of the corridor. "There's the med-lab. We'll have to be quick, or this'll be the shortest rescue of all time."

"No… no shit," Dani gasped, her right hand almost turned totally crimson as she tried, without success, to stem the flow of blood from her wounded shoulder with a strip of cloth torn from her sleeve. Kitty could tell Dani was close to collapse, her forehead coated with a thick sheen of sweat, but when she'd tried to offer the other girl some physical support, she'd been rebuffed angrily. She wobbled over to where the door-release button was, and slapped it as hard as she could. The doors hissed open, and Dani led the rebels inside –

– and that was when Dani's body evaporated in a bloody explosion, as she was hit from all sides by a fusillade of AK-47 fire from the Russian troops who had popped up from concealed ambush spots all around the med-lab. Her corpse collapsed in a mangled heap on the ground, a thick pool of gore collecting around it even as a black-coated woman stepped out of cover and marched towards them, placing her black peaked cap on her tightly bound red hair as she did so. Kitty was horrified to see the metal monster that had destroyed her rebel cell standing right behind the other woman, his massive arms folded across his chest and his gaze fixed completely on his beaten foes.

"Good afternoon," the red-haired woman said, a slow smile spreading across her beautiful, yet utterly ice-cold features. "I'll take those, I think." With a flick of her wrist, she deprived each rebel of every piece of weaponry and ammunition that they possessed, sending them flying across the room to settle in a small pile at the feet of a couple of grinning Red Army soldiers. When the weapons had stopped moving, the red-head folded her arms and turned back towards her beaten foes. "That's better. Now: I don't want to kill any more of you – not unless you give me a good reason to do so. I'd much rather put your talents to good use, so I'm going to offer you a choice – you can go to the gulag, or you can become counter-insurgency operatives for the Red Army. Which is it going to be?"

"Why should we believe you? You ain't exactly given us much reason to –" Cecilia spat contemptuously – and then began to clutch at her collar as the red-headed woman pointed at her with two fingers of her right hand, her eyes focused totally on the other woman's throat.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," she began, "especially since you don't exactly have many other options. Let me put it more simply: you have two choices, and only two choices, that will let you live. Don't squander them." Then, with another flick of her wrist, she released her invisible grip on Cecilia's throat, making her collapse to her knees and leaving her gratefully gulping down great lungfuls of air. Kitty took a moment to check on her fallen colleague, and then glanced back up at their captor.

"What would you want us to do if we accepted your offer?" she asked, hoping to keep the woman occupied for as long as she could. The red-head looked down at her as she knelt beside Cecilia, and smiled that cold, evil smile again.

"Clever girl," she hissed. "Distract me by making it look like you're agreeing with my terms, until you can find a way to escape. You'd make a fine soldier for the Revolution." She paused, tapping her chin with one gloved hand. "Perhaps you still can be…" She turned and nodded towards the metal man-mountain. "Take her to a holding cell. Perhaps I can change her mind about serving us." She laughed, and then waved the hulking giant forwards. He made to take a step forwards, but then faltered a little, drool spilling out of one suddenly slack corner of his lips. It seemed to last only a moment or so, and then he began moving forwards again – but instead of grabbing Kitty as he had been ordered, his huge metal hand closed around the red-head's neck.

"You have interfered in my affairs for the last time, Major," the steel colossus droned, sounding as if he were merely a mouthpiece for someone else's words, as the red-headed woman struggled against his iron grip. "I do not take kindly to people meddling in my business – and I especially do not like KGB bitches. Goodbye, Major Grey."

_Crack._


	11. In A New York Minute

Kitty watched in horror as the metal giant looked curiously at the limp, sagging figure of the red-headed woman he had just killed, and laughed in the strangely detached fashion that mirrored the way he had been speaking only a few moments beforehand. Then, tossing the body aside with bone-cracking force, so that it hit the closest wall and landed in a smashed and crumpled heap, the monster turned towards the small group of rebels – who, like the Soviet soldiers who had just witnessed the murder of their commanding officer, were frozen in place like rabbits caught in headlights – and began stomping towards them with brutally powerful resolve, every footstep causing the ground almost to shake.

"I don't like rebellion," the giant snarled, a devilish sneer etched crookedly onto his gleaming features. "Rebel filth like you deserves nothing better than to be exterminated. Goodbye." And at that moment, the giant stopped in his tracks, his eyes rolling up into his head for a moment or two, before he shook himself and re-focused his gaze on the broken corpse of his superior officer.

"You have murdered Major Grey," he said in a low voice, fury bubbling just beneath the surface of his words as he pointed to the upturned body lying against the wall, with greyish brain matter oozing from its shattered skull and pooling thickly around its shoulders like spilt glue. His face twisted itself into an enraged mask of hate, and, roaring in anger, he charged straight at Kitty. As he did so, she saw tendrils like those she had seen on Omega Red slither out of his bulging, bandaged wrists, slick with blood and oily slime. Instantly, her mind made a connection between the mangled surgical tools that she and the rest of her squad had seen on the way down to the lab where they were presently being pinned down, but just as quickly she discarded it, because she had far more important things to worry about. Phasing with a single thought, she swayed reflexively out of the steel behemoth's path so that his charge hit nothing but thin air. Snarling, he swung about on one heel and sent one razor-tipped tentacle snaking towards Hank with blistering speed, as the other big man made a charge of his own towards the enraged Russian. Hank managed to throw one meaty forearm up to intercept the tendril but as it wrapped around his arm, he was yanked off his feet and then hurled aside like a rag doll. He slammed into the nearest wall, bloody lines stitched across his forearm where the tentacle's sharpened tip had carved through his skin, and for a second or two Kitty thought he was dead. Then he twitched and spat a thick glob of blood-streaked spittle onto the ground, and a brief ripple of relief passed through her, before she realised that to have any chance against this brute she and her squad needed weapons – any kind of weapons.

"We need our guns back!" she yelled at Madrox, who was busy taking cover behind a cabinet full of bulging files when Kitty joined him, as bullets began to erupt from the Russian soldiers' newly-raised guns. Apparently their shock had begun to wear off, and they were supporting their hulking comrade as best they could while he began wiping his opponents out. Evidently they weren't going to try to arrest him for killing the redheaded woman; and for that, Kitty didn't blame them. He was apparently so enraged he might have killed them as well.

"Tell me something I don't fucking know," Madrox snarled, before a thin splinter of metal embedded itself deeply into his forehead. He shrieked in pain and then hurled a binder full of patients' notes at the closest soldier in a fit of hopeless anger, with blood trailing down the bridge of his nose and dripping onto the leg of his fatigues. It hit the soldier full in the face and sent him tumbling backwards, clutching his pulverised cheek. "You really have a talent for stating the goddamn fucking obvious, Kit." He wiped blood from his face and flicked it onto the white floor tiles, spraying bright red droplets across the pristine surface in a wide arc. "How the fuck have you survived this long?"

Kitty fought the urge to smile – right now was most definitely not the time for that, she decided – and nodded over to where Cecilia and Sam were backing nervously away from the huge Russian, who was stalking towards them with determined resolve, his hands flexing open and closed while his tentacles slithered through the air like snakes on the hunt for prey. "Give those two a hand," she said, helpfully slapping Madrox around the face so that a dupe popped into existence beside him. "I'm going to go get tooled up. Wish me luck."

"I think I'm gonna need all that luck myself," the first Madrox muttered. "Come on, loser. Might as well go out in a blaze of glory."

"Or as a greasy red smear," the second Madrox countered acidly.

"Yeah," the first Madrox replied in a flat kind of way. "See you soon, Kit."

And with that, the two Madroxes dashed across the lab with their heads down, hails of bullets following them as they did so. Kitty didn't look at them as she willed herself intangible again and ran out of cover. Keeping her head down instinctively, she moved quickly towards the pile of weapons that was stacked haphazardly behind the line of Russian soldiers and their new commanding officer, the weasel-like young man who had been standing behind the red-head like a beaten dog. As she neared their line she saw the young man firing his rifle from the hip – and also holding his left arm up and shooting what looked to be spikes of hardened ice at her, leaving a line of them embedded in the wall behind her as she ran, the spikes having driven themselves an inch deep into the plastic. "Die, you bitch!" she heard him scream as his rifle cycled dry and he began using both hands to fire the ice-spikes at her. "Fucking  _die!_ "

Kitty diligently ignored him as she neared the pile of weapons, but she knew that she'd soon have to go solid for a few seconds in order to even pick up one weapon – and that was the real problem with her idea.  _Great,_  she thought, mentally rolling her eyes at her own stupidity.  _Why didn't I think of this before?_  Then she noticed a hand grenade sitting at the top of the pile, staring her right in the face. A flash of inspiration suddenly lit up like a neon light in the back of her mind.

_Gotta time this just right…_

Diving towards it, she went solid just long enough to close her hand around the grenade and then phased herself through the weapons so that she had enough momentary cover to throw herself behind a bloodstained research table, pull the grenade's pin and hurl it towards a knot of Russian soldiers. "Fire in the hole!" she yelled as the grenade hit the ground, shredding the Soviet troops as it exploded. Even as she was dropping to the ground to cover her ears, though, she saw several ice-spikes punch their way through the table's thin metal skirt, barely inches away from her face.

"We're coming to get you, you little bitch," she heard the young man saying, every word dripping malice as he drew nearer to where she was hiding. "Time to die."

 _We'll see about that, asshole,_  Kitty thought sourly, scrabbling for another helping hand in the pile of weapons that lay beside her. Her frantic fingers found two pistols with full magazines, and she grinned in relief before dragging an automatic rifle out of the heap of weapons and taking it in both hands. That little prick of a Soviet officer wouldn't even know what hit him, she decided. As his voice got louder and louder, Kitty gathered strength in her legs and dived out from her hiding place, phasing right through the bloodied desk and past the young officer, causing him to let loose a spread of ice-spikes that hammered into every solid surface around her. As she did so, she cried "Jamie! Catch!" and threw the rifle towards where Madrox and two of his duplicates were standing. The closest Madrox caught the rifle in one smooth motion, while at the same time evading a wild, furious punch by the giant metal soldier, and then pumped the trigger twice quickly, spraying a lethal spread of bullets towards two of the steel monster's vulnerable squad-mates. They fell, clutching wounds that had suddenly flowered on their arms and legs, and then thrashed uselessly as the ground around them slowly turned crimson.

Kitty suppressed a haggard smile at that, and then ghosted towards her team as fast as she could, bullets whipping through her phased form as she did so. Leaping towards the steel giant as he stalked Sam and Cecilia like a panther, she reversed a serrated knife in her hands, and, as she neared him, drove the intangible blade into the back of his skull up to the hilt. Then she let go and watched the giant stagger, flapping at the knife with weak, kittenish hands before his knees folded and he fell heavily on his face, causing his Russian comrades to fall into a stunned silence. Kitty savoured the short pause as much as she could before she rejoined Madrox in his well-covered position, laden down with extra weapons.

"Damn, Kit," Madrox murmured as he cocked his rifle, "remind me not to piss you off."

* * *

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock took her gloved hands away from her temples and sighed. It was a shame to sacrifice such a useful tool as Comrade-Lieutenant Rasputin, but the greater good had to be served, she supposed. Besides the fact that Omega Red's tentacles could just as easily be grafted to another willing volunteer, she needed as few witnesses to her murder of Major Grey as possible, and the more she could wipe out in the course of this engagement, the better. That was why she had engineered it so that Comrade Rasputin had been just sluggish enough to allow the rebel girl to jam a knife into the back of his head. Let her believe it was down to her own martial skill, Elisabeth decided – there would be time enough for her to have that proven otherwise. She still had to get out of the Empire State Building, after all, and Elisabeth had no intention of letting her get out alive.

She chuckled softly as she realised that she would most likely be commended for this – her superiors in the Kremlin would probably tell her that her actions here would be "a valiant defence of the Revolution", and pin another medal on her chest while showering her with slithering platitudes. Meanwhile, Major Grey would get nothing more than a few overly-earnest words over her coffin, and a memorial stone that nobody but the most dedicated of party officials would ever read. Elisabeth sneered to herself as she mulled that thought over briefly, savouring the irony that someone who had spent most of their life as the Kremlin's obedient lap-dog would get nothing, while someone whose military career had sometimes been furthered through tactics that the Russian government disapproved of, would be richly rewarded.

 _So much for all your power, Major Grey,_  she thought, satisfied.  _Now you're gone, and I'm still here. I hope you're satisfied._  Putting her gloating aside for a moment or two, she put her fingers to her temples again and initiated telepathic contact with Lieutenant Drake.  _Status report,_  she said simply, knowing that Comrade Drake would only give her the most important information, and wouldn't waste her time with irrelevancies.

 _The rebels are pinned down,_  he replied quickly.  _Comrade Rasputin is dead, but they're not getting out of here alive – and their leaders aren't going to get anywhere, either._

 _Good,_  Elisabeth told her adjutant.  _Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to recall you, Comrade Drake. Concede command to one of your NCOs and return to my office._ She felt him begin to protest, and cut him off instantly.  ** _Now_** _, Comrade Drake – don't make me have you court-martialled for insubordination._  When she cut the telepathic contact, her fingers moved silently to the desk drawer to her right, where her Russian Army pistol was stored. Turning the drawer's small key and hearing the click of the lock as it was released gave Elisabeth a new perspective on what she was about to do – the lock either was locked or unlocked. There was no mid-point. Her actions now were the same – there could be no compromise between her two options. And besides, this was something she had to do personally – there could be no compromise there, either.

Shortly, there was a knock at the door, and she told Comrade Drake to enter. As he slipped silently through the door, she raised her pistol and fired three times into his torso, knocking him backwards into the doorframe. He staggered forwards a few paces, looking at her with confused, pleading eyes, and then she stood and moved towards him, cupping his shaking jaw in her hand. "I'm sorry," she said, for once meaning every word, "but this is the way it has to be, Comrade Drake. I can't have any witnesses." Drake crumpled to his knees, his strength finally giving out on him, and then fell flat on his face. Blood from his wounds spilled out around him in a wide puddle, surrounding his body with a crimson halo. Elisabeth looked down at the corpse, and said "You were a good officer, Robert." It wasn't the first time she'd used his first name, but Elisabeth felt, somehow, that it was right to do so now. "But you were a liability, and I can't afford any liabilities. Not now."

Elisabeth holstered her pistol and then left her office without another word, instead silently communicating with her other officers around the building in order to set things in motion in the way she desired them. Pulling back her right sleeve, she began counting the pale, faded tally-marks she had carved into her skin years before, brushing her gloved fingers over the small bumps and remembering the blood she had spilt to earn them, kill by gory kill. It was a long and laborious task, to be sure, but she hoped that by the end of this engagement, she might have another few scars to add to her total. She pulled the magazine of her pistol out and slapped it back into the butt of her gun reflexively, as if to make sure that it was properly cocked and ready to be fired. Old rituals never died, she thought with sour finality as she pushed the pistol back into its holster.

* * *

Kitty braced herself to break cover and fire a short burst from her pistols, when she suddenly heard the Russian troops start pulling back out of the med-lab. Astonished, she risked a glance out from behind her refuge and saw them moving through the door in a swift but still orderly manner, every weapon still raised high and every boot slamming into the med-lab's tiled floor with definite purpose. As she watched, one of the Russian troopers caught sight of her and fired a quick, opportunistic volley of rounds with his rifle, which didn't do anything more than just rattle her a little as they passed right through her face.

"What the fuck is this?" Madrox whispered, sounding just as stunned as she was. "They had us cold. They could have killed us right here."

"Who the hell cares?" Sam snapped, still clutching at the wounds on his chest and thigh. "We got more of a chance of getting out now. I say we take it."

"I don't think any of us would disagree, Sam, but we need to find Logan, and we need to help Hank," Cecilia said as she knelt by the unconscious form of her husband. "I think he's concussed – maybe a broken wrist too. There's no telling if he'll be able to walk without help."

"Then we might have to leave him here," Madrox said flatly. Cecilia started to swear at him, but he nodded towards the door. "Needs of the many, Cece. Hank would say the same, I bet. We don't leave him here, we all might die."

"Fuck you, 'best man'," Cecilia snapped, and began dragging the half-conscious, groggy Hank to his feet. "I'll carry him myself if I have to, but I'm not leaving him here."

Kitty ignored the argument for a moment and walked towards two black doors in the wall opposite her. She pushed them open and the sight behind them sent both a chill up her spine and a shudder through her guts. It was Logan, and he was being strung up in some kind of metal frame. Liquids laced with blood flowed in and out of him through long plastic tubes, and his eyes were fluttering beneath their lids as if he was having a hallucination of some kind. Kitty didn't dare imagine the kind of pain he was in, but she wasted no time in yelling out "I've found him!" Quickly her team-mates joined her, and her revulsion was soon matched by theirs as they saw what the Soviet scientists had done in the name of science.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Cecilia murmured as she stood with one arm supporting Hank's muscular bulk, one of his own meaty arms over her shoulders. "What did they do to him?"

"Using… healing factor… for soldiers," came a sudden hoarse whisper from off to one side. Kitty whirled, expecting to find another horrible experiment, but instead seeing Valerie Cooper simply tied to a chair with leather straps, bloody stitches sewn into her head and bruises peppering her flesh.

The first to react was Madrox. "Val!" he cried, clearly very surprised to see her alive. He dashed quickly over to where she was sitting and began loosening her bonds, grabbing one of Kitty's knives and slicing them in half with short singular strokes. Meanwhile, the rest of the squad bar Hank began pulling at the tubes tethering Logan to the metal framework, helping the little man down to the ground where he collapsed in a mangled heap. His wounds closed themselves quickly, but when he stood up again he still looked as if he would fall over again at any moment.

"You shouldn't have come," he whispered through a raw, dry throat as he accepted a welcome gulp of water from Kitty's small canteen. "They already got what they needed from me."

"What do you mean?" Kitty asked, unease creeping in at the edges of her voice as she did so. "What did they get?"

"Other than the location of every rebel base in this city?" Logan replied, his dry-leaves voice rustling from his lips. "They got my healin' power, kid. They copied it and they're mass-producin' it right now, right here. Sooner or later this city's gonna be crawlin' with unkillable Russkies."

"Then we have to stop them," Kitty said decisively, grabbing a bottle of surgical spirits and spilling it liberally around the med-lab. Flicking open her lighter, she hurled it into the closest puddle of liquid, making a flame leap into the air and scurry along the ground like lightning. As it did so, Kitty turned to her ragged team-mates and continued "Now, let's get out of here while the getting's good…"


	12. Dead Man's Hand

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock marched smartly down the corridor leading from her office, saluting her soldiers as she went with absent-minded precision, her gloved hands otherwise curled tightly into fists and her stone-coloured greatcoat flapping around her ankles. She had placed her officer's cap on her head after tightly binding her long blonde hair into a severe bun – if she was to confront this ragged collection of rebel filth face-to-face, she had decided, she did not want any hindrances to her aim. And besides that, she wanted to look as much like the avenging demon she supposed the American dogs thought her to be. Even in the midst of battle, she knew image was everything – simply appear to be somebody's doom, and they would accept you as such, meekly rolling over and letting you crush them like cockroaches. The rebels would soon be smashed underfoot, that Elisabeth had promised herself.

She stepped inside the elevator and stabbed the button that would take her down to the ground floor before reaching inside her greatcoat and pulling out her pistol. Once again she checked the magazine and firing mechanism, cocking the gun at least twice and slipping it back into its holster. She picked out a spot on the inside of the elevator door and aimed at it precisely with the gun, almost feeling the bullet punch out of the weapon's barrel and through the thin door, anticipation of physical combat flaring inside her. She put the gun away again, knowing that she would most likely repeat the ritual again sooner rather than later, and then glanced at the sleeve of her right arm, feeling the three fresh cuts she had made in her skin still stinging: one for Major Grey, one for Lieutenant Rasputin, and one for Lieutenant Drake. She wanted –  _needed_  – to add more kills to the tally she had preserved in her skin. Major Grey, Drake and Rasputin were only the start.

The desk-job had had her chained down long enough. Now it was time for her to take back her birthright – being right in the thick of the blood and grime and noise of the battlefield was where she rightfully belonged. She could almost taste the stinging cordite and smoke in the air, as she had when she had personally led her troops into battle against Mexican rebels and had emerged victorious, rebel blood splashed on her uniform like a badge of honour. She could feel her heart beginning to pound like a hammer against the inside of her ribs as hot, excited blood coursed through her veins like liquid fire.

 _Yes. I have earned this right,_  she thought determinedly, _and nobody will be able to take this from me. Nobody._

Breaking off from her own thoughts for a second, she put her fingers to her temples and made telepathic contact with the officer that Lieutenant Drake had left in charge.  _Report, Lieutenant Wagner,_  she said curtly, hoping that this officer was as useful at relaying information as Drake had been. If he wasn't, then she knew right away that he'd be worth replacing as soon as possible once this particular conflict had ended.

 _The rebels are moving towards the surface,_  he answered, respectfully.  _However, there have been scattered reports of a fire in the med-lab. I have sent troops to contain it, if possible._

 _See that you do, Lieutenant,_  Elisabeth said, her eyes narrowing.  _With the fire in the truck depot already almost totally out of control as it is, I don't want any more… mishaps… occurring until we can get reinforcements from elsewhere. This installation is too important for it to be sacrificed, do you understand me?_

 _Yes, Comrade-Colonel,_  the officer on the other end of the mind-link replied, Elisabeth letting his sour fear flow pleasantly into every corner of her mind as he did so.  _At once._

 _Good,_  Elisabeth said, and then abruptly cut the psychic contact. She had long since discovered that her silence was a more potent weapon than anything she could ever say aloud, and she liked exercising that effect as often as possible. She closed her eyes and waited for the elevator to take her right down to the ground…

… and was almost instantly rocked off her feet by a rumbling that caused the elevator to shake and shudder in its shaft. She knew enough about ballistics to realise that that had been the shockwave from a sizeable explosion, and immediately re-opened her link to Lieutenant Wagner.  _Report,_ she snapped again, angry that for the first time in a long time, she didn't know what was going on.

 _The rebels have detonated an explosive device close to their last recorded position,_  Wagner replied, sounding remarkably composed despite what had just happened. Elisabeth wondered briefly whether to mentally mark him down for a commendation later, but discounted that as irrelevant for the moment. There were more important things to worry about here and now than simply pinning medals to a subordinate's chest.

 _Damage?_ she demanded, tapping her chin thoughtfully with one gloved finger and glancing at the backlit floor indicator above the elevator door, seeing with simmering frustration that she was still well above ground level.

 _Undetermined, as yet,_ Lieutenant Wagner explained. _We have lost contact with at least one squad of troops and there seem to be power fluctuations in that area as well. I have sent two squads to investigate, but I fear we will not know the full extent of the damage for some time._

Elisabeth felt the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips at that. At last, she had the prospect of a challenge. She liked that thought.  _Good work, Lieutenant. Keep me informed._

* * *

Kitty felt grateful for the respite that the explosion had brought her and the rest of the squad – with the corridor collapsed behind them thanks to one of the blocks of plastique that Hank and Cecilia had had the foresight to bring along, it would take the Soviets valuable time to circle around and come at them from a different angle. Kitty decided that that was a very good thing right now; it would give them less time under fire, and that was exactly what they needed with four wounded colleagues to look out for. Val, Sam, Hank and Logan were all far from their best physically – and although Kitty could see Logan was improving almost by the second, thanks to his fast healing, she still didn't think it was sensible to put the old man back in harm's way just yet. She wasn't worried about being outnumbered – she knew that with Madrox around, that wouldn't ever be a problem – but she  _was_  worried about being caught with her pants down, or getting trapped in a corner and having nowhere else to run to. She didn't want to leave the wounded to the Ivans, either, because she knew they'd just be sent off to Alaska and worked to death in the labour camps. Although with the combination of the fires in the truck depot and the med-lab, and the explosion that had just gone off, she hoped that that wouldn't come to pass.

"So… you got any idea where we're going, babe?" Madrox said as cheerfully as he could manage, jogging up beside her with his rifle clutched in one hand and a grenade held in the other.

"No," Kitty muttered, pointing to a large set of directions bolted to the wall beside her. "I can't read these fucking Russian signs, remember?"

"Well, I can," Logan said, holding his side briefly as his muscles continued knitting themselves back together – Kitty could see the surface of Logan's skin shifting like the surface of a pool of water as tissue re-grew underneath it. He stepped up to the board and started scanning it as quickly as he could, underlining the words with a finger as he read them. "Okay. We're on sub-level two… so if we keep goin' straight, then take a left, and then another left, we should reach the stairwell without any more problems." He grinned, exposing his sharp canines. "Looks like we'll be gettin' outta here after all."

"Looks like," Kitty agreed, feeling slightly less lost than before. Then she turned and looked at Cecilia, who was still helping her concussed husband to stay upright, and grudgingly allowing a Madrox dupe to help her. "How's Hank?" she asked, seeing from his vacant, unfocused gaze that the answer wasn't going to be one she wanted to hear.

"Not good," Cecilia replied, confirming Kitty's sour expectations. "He can just about stand on his own now, but running or fighting's out of the question."

"Still can't see straight," Hank mumbled, sounding just as hopelessly dazed as he had the last time Kitty had heard him try to talk. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise," Cecilia told him firmly, brushing some stray hair out of his eyes. "You don't have  _anything_  to be sorry for, you hear me?"

Logan's sandpaper-rough laughter echoed in the empty corridor at that moment. "Yeah, Hank – if anybody should be apologisin', it oughtta be me. I got you into this by gettin' myself captured by those bastards in the first place."

"You know, much as I hate to interrupt this touching little Kodak moment," Madrox said, coughing slightly, "it's pretty much too late to be handing out blame to anybody. When we get back to… to… to wherever it is we're going to go once we're out of here,  _then_  we can start ripping chunks out of each other. Until then, I suggest we all keep a lid on things like that, and try staying alive first."

"I second that," Val agreed in a strained, hoarse voice. Kitty could see that she was still suffering from the persistent headache the glancing bullet wound had caused, and she could also see that with the Russkie anaesthetic wearing off, Val's pain was getting worse. "You'll make a leader yet, Jamie." She offered Madrox the best smile she could manage, pulling the edges of her mouth up almost imperceptibly into a thin, lipless line, and then patted him on the shoulder with her left hand – her right was clutching one of Kitty's pistols. Kitty had offered it to her more as a security measure than anything else: right now she was convinced Val wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of a barn, but having a gun in her hand would probably make her feel more comfortable about the whole situation, if nothing else.

Just then, another passageway loomed up on Kitty's left, and she reached into her bag for another block of plastique. "Okay," she said, before taking a deep breath and jabbing the contact points of a fuse into the soft material before fixing it to a power-relay box on the wall. With luck, it might also help knock out the building's electricity, or at least slow it down for a while "Everybody get clear." When the squad was a reasonably safe distance away from the potential blast zone, Kitty took a detonator from the bag and pressed it together with the wires snaking from the plastique. Taking a deep breath, she pushed its button down with her thumb and yelled "Fire in the hole!" before phasing instinctively as the corridor collapsed, spilling dust and chunks of concrete and steel everywhere.  _Something else for the Ivans to work through,_  Kitty mused privately, a haggard grin crossing her lips for a second or so. Making her way down the corridor to where the rest of her squad were positioned behind what little cover they could find, she shrugged. "Time to move on, I guess."

Sam took a hand away from his blood-soaked ribs to gesture at the passageway in front of them. "You're one hundred percent sure you know where we're goin', Logan?" he asked, scepticism thick in his pain-wracked voice. "I don't wanna end up dead because you forgot how to read, old man."

Logan growled deep in his throat, obviously annoyed that his judgement had been questioned. "I'm as sure as I'm ever gonna be," he replied in a gruff, clipped tone, both his fists clenching tightly closed. "That's all I can tell you… boy."

In response, Sam simply snorted contemptuously and began moving down the corridor as quickly as his wounds would allow, blood continuing to spatter in sporadic droplets onto the tiled floor as he did so. Watching him limping a little, Madrox slapped a hand against the wall and popped another dupe into existence. "You want a hand, man?" the dupe said in concern. "I got two, after all."

"I'm fine," Sam muttered, fixing his gaze on the corridor ahead of him and intentionally speeding up so that the dupe couldn't take his arm. "I don't need no help from anybody, you hear me?"

Madrox shot a questioning look at Kitty, who simply shrugged. "You heard the man," she said. "Let's pick up the pace, guys. Don't want to be here when the Ivans decide to drop in, after all."  _Guess that's one thing we can all agree on,_  she thought bitterly.

* * *

Colonel Braddock felt the elevator touch down, the familiar momentary lurch as the compartment's speed vanished a welcome sensation, especially now. She stepped out and walked towards the defensive perimeter that her troops had established in the lobby, and then found the provisional commanding officer, Lieutenant Wagner. He saluted with one of his blue-furred, two-fingered hands, and gave her a quick, perfunctory summary of how he had arranged his forces so far – giving her details of how he had re-assigned men to help stem the spread of the fires in both the truck depot and the med-lab, and to deal with the rubble caused by the explosions in the sub-levels – Elisabeth had felt the second blast just as she was about to arrive at ground level, and had demanded an explanation there and then. Fortunately, Lieutenant Wagner had had foresight enough to know that it ought to be dealt with as soon as possible, and had made sure he had all of his bases covered before she had demanded that he do something. Elisabeth made another mental note that this was a man worth watching in the future.  _Perhaps I should make him my new adjutant,_  she mused thoughtfully.  _The position_ is  _vacant now, after all…_

"Very good, Lieutenant," she said, after he had finished laying out his plans to her. "Now pull back."

Lieutenant Wagner's face looked as if he had swallowed a hand-grenade. "Sir?" he said, confused. "We have a solid defensive position here. If the rebels come from anywhere in the building they will –"

Elisabeth held up her hand. "I know, Lieutenant – and that is why you will pull back to the outside of the building. I wish to face them… alone."

"Comrade-Colonel?" Lieutenant Wagner asked, incredulous. "I don't... I don't understand. What are you –"

Elisabeth held up a hand to silence him. "I'm not  _asking_  you to understand, Comrade-Lieutenant Wagner, I am  _ordering_  you to pull back. And if you do not do it, I will personally sign the order that will transport you and your whole wretched regiment to Alaska. I trust you understand  _that_?" She jabbed a gloved hand into his fur-covered face for emphasis, making sure that he understood exactly what she meant and leaving no room for confusion.

Lieutenant Wagner swallowed, and then nodded respectfully, before walking back to his troops and relaying the order from the other lieutenants down to the sergeants and the enlisted men, every trooper carrying out his part in the operation with the speed and efficiency that Elisabeth was so proud of when she thought of her soldiers. They trooped outside and set up defensive positions facing towards the building, with machine guns and sharpshooters taking precedence over the normal rank-and-file men. Every exit was covered, and Elisabeth was sure that nothing would get out of the building alive unless she allowed it.

 _This ends here,_  she thought, pulling her pistol out of its holster for a final time.  _Let them come…_

* * *

Kitty helped Val climb the stairs, easing her injured body up each step as quickly as she could. Val pulled her breath in through her teeth every few minutes or so, as a movement hit a tender muscle or a bruised arm or leg, but she kept going, determined to get to the top. The same was true of Cecilia and Hank, and the Madrox dupe that was helping them – even though Hank was nearly twice Cecilia's size, she didn't give up, and kept pushing his muscular bulk up the stairs as fast as she could. When he stumbled, she caught him, and offered him a reassuring word or two as she helped him back to his feet.

Sam was a different story, though, and that worried Kitty. He had taken to pushing himself harder and harder, leading the way, and even with his injuries was refusing help. He used his shotgun as a crutch sometimes, and often bounced off the concrete wall of the stairwell, making Kitty wince in shared discomfort, but he didn't stop. The one time Madrox popped another dupe out to try and help him up, Sam had angrily shrugged him off again, with the same message as before.

"I don't like this," Madrox whispered to Kitty. "This isn't Sam. He's a jerk, yeah, but he's never been this jerky. Something's wrong."

"Probably the eight pounds of buckshot he's got in his side, kid," Logan interrupted as he padded lithely up the stairs in front of Kitty, all his wounds finally mended. "That'll make a man say just about anythin'."

"Agreed," Val murmured in a low voice. "I think we'll have to keep an extra eye on him. Logan, can you take care of that?"

The small man touched two fingers to his brow briefly in a short salute. "Gotcha, Val. I just hope I won't need to do anythin' drastic, is all."

Sam stumbled up the last few steps to the ground level, and waited for the rest of the squad to reach him before he smiled smugly at them. "Glad y'all could make it," he said, blood bubbles popping at the side of his mouth as he spoke, and then he grasped the handle of the door as hard as he could and flung it wide open, limping through and into the wide open space of the building's converted lobby. He laughed as he saw the Soviet troops waiting outside, their weapons trained on the exits. "Looks like they planned us a real party, huh?"

And then his leg exploded, a high-calibre round punching right into the meat and gristle of his knee-joint and making it fold like a house of cards. He landed squarely on the shattered joint and screamed as bone crunched unpleasantly. Kitty cursed herself for watching Sam instead of looking around to secure the area, and then realised that she couldn't see anybody else in the lobby at all. None of the soldiers outside had fired – there were no holes in the glass, for one thing, and she could see that there were no smoking barrels amongst the Russian troops.

Another bullet hit Sam square in the stomach, making him scream again – and Kitty still hadn't seen any muzzle flash or other indication of where the bullets were coming from.

_What the fuck is going on here?_

Mocking laughter erupted out of thin air, seemingly coming from behind the squad. Kitty whirled, her gun at the ready, but she saw nothing, and instead only felt a cold trickle of sweat running down the back of her neck and into the fabric of her ragged T-shirt. The laughter sounded again, this time from the squad's left. Kitty looked in that direction nervously, her breath catching in her throat, and once more saw nothing.

Sam was hit one more time then, through the back of the head. His hands twitched once, reflexively, and then he lay still. As Kitty watched the spreading pool of brains and blood oozing from around her team-mate's head, she saw a form begin to materialise in front of her, something that definitely hadn't been there before. It was a woman – a Red Army officer, Kitty quickly realised, since she was dressed in the traditional grey greatcoat and peaked cap that all Soviet officers wore. When she was fully visible, she simply smiled. "Hello, Logan," she said, eyeing the short man with almost casual coldness. "Good to see you again."


	13. Bringing A Knife Out To A Gunfight

Kitty felt a shiver running down her spine as the woman in the Red Army uniform spoke. There seemed to be a cold, icy determination about her, which seemed to say that she knew exactly how to proceed despite her being outnumbered and outgunned. All she had was the small Soviet pistol, and that was at least three bullets down from a full clip already after her casual murder of Sam. Nowhere near enough for her to take on a squad of rebels by herself, in any case – and yet she still oozed confidence. Perhaps, Kitty supposed, that had something to do with the Soviet soldiers massing outside the glass that closed her in with the rebels, but that alone wasn't enough for her to be so sure of herself.

_I don't like this…_

"Nothing to say, Logan?" the woman said, raising an eyebrow. "I'd have thought you'd be happy to see me again. After all, we shared  _so_  many things, didn't we?"

"We shared jack shit, lady," Logan snarled. "You got my friends killed, and you're gonna die for it." His claws snickered from between his knuckles with a wet rasp of bone against flesh, and Kitty could see his squat, powerful legs tensing for an explosive burst of movement. The woman simply stood and folded her arms, looking totally unconcerned.

"Go ahead, Logan," she said. "I dare you."

Logan growled deep in his throat, and flung himself at the woman – or rather, he tried to fling himself at her, but instead found himself rooted to the spot, his bloody claws slipping back inside his forearms as he did so. Confused, he tried to pull himself away from where he stood, with little success. "Shoot her," he snarled. "Shoot her! She's doin' this! She –" He fell silent then, his mouth falling prey to the same invisible force as the rest of his body.

Kitty didn't need to be told twice. Going for her pistols, she pulled them up and locked her fingers on the triggers… but nothing happened. She tried to fire, but her body wouldn't listen. Every time she tried to move, she felt nothing but a dull buzz as her brain tried uselessly to re-establish contact with her muscles.  _What the hell is going on here?_  Seeing her confusion, the woman smiled, and Kitty felt her blood freeze.

"You can't move, little girl, because I am not allowing it. My telepathy is disrupting your brain's access to your muscles, and until I let go, every one of you will stay exactly where you are." She threw her pistol away across the room, where it skittered through the puddle of blood and meat that was still spreading outwards from Sam Guthrie's ruined skull, leaving a smear of red on the pristine floor. Taking her cap off her head, she threw that away as well, and pulled at the band securing her hair, freeing the long tresses in a dazzling blonde cascade. Then she shrugged herself out of her greatcoat, letting that fall to the ground with a heavy thump. Underneath it, Kitty was surprised to see she was clad only in a standard-issue undershirt and combat fatigues – but that paled alongside what she saw lay on the woman's sleekly-muscled arms.

Scars.

Dozens of them, criss-crossed by more scars like tally marks carved in blood, lay along the entire length of both her arms, from the shoulder to the wrist. The woman noticed Kitty looking at her neatly-sliced flesh, and smiled that awful, liquid-nitrogen smile again. "Like what you see?" she remarked matter-of-factly. "Every one of these scars is a kill I made myself." Then she stepped forwards and locked her gaze with Kitty, enjoying Kitty's sense of gut-wrenching fear as she did so. "Do you understand me? I have killed more people than you'll ever be able to count, little girl, and you and your kin are no different to me than animals waiting to be slaughtered." She reached down to her belt and pulled out a vicious-looking combat knife that was easily the length of Kitty's forearm, examining the blade almost absently as she continued "The only real question here is how long I let you survive." She leaned closer to Kitty, poising the point of her blade inches away from Kitty's cheek. "I could put this through your eyes and then cut your face off in slices, and you wouldn't even be able to stop me. I could kill your friends, one after the other, and then let you bleed out through your stomach. I could let them watch me butcher you and paint myself in your blood." She leaned closer to Kitty, brushing the knife ever-so-gently against the skin of her throat, gleefully enjoying the way that Kitty's eyes widened even further and a strangled moan escaped from between her frozen lips. "I could do all of that, little girl… but I'm not going to. No, what you and I are going to do now is  _far_  more interesting than that." She pressed the tip of her blade against Kitty's cheek and, with a whisper of movement, took a tiny slice out of the skin, a trickle of blood slipping from the wound. Then, without another word, she simply waved her hand and Kitty's artificially-tensed muscles suddenly relaxed, sending her own pistols clattering to the ground. She staggered, struggling for a moment to keep her balance, and then looked up. The woman was simply standing ready, her weapon raised and its oversized blade glittering evilly. "It's been too long since I bested an enemy in open combat," she said, anticipation shining in her violet eyes. "Come on. Provide me with some sport." Kitty suddenly felt her right hand moving awkwardly towards one of the combat knives at her belt, her fingers grasping slackly at the weapon's handle.

_Okay. If that's the way you want to play it, you murdering bitch…_

Tightening her grip on her knife, Kitty lunged at the woman, the blade whispering within an inch or so of her side. The woman twisted away, blocking the blow with her own blade and sending a shower of sparks to the floor, where they caused the spreading bloody puddle to hiss and bubble softly. Kitty neatly pirouetted outside of the woman's range, flipping her knife from one hand to the other in order to block a return stroke from her opponent, more sparks flying as the two razor-keen cutting edges clashed again. For a single priceless instant, Kitty saw that the woman's reach was over-extended, her knife only giving her so much protection, so she quickly unsheathed another blade from her belt, ducked inside her opponent's guard and slashed at her face, taking a thin line of skin out of the woman's cheek to mirror the wound on her own. The woman screeched in pain and then retreated back a few paces, touching the fingers of her free hand to her bloodied face for a second or two – and then Kitty was stunned to see her smiling broadly as they continued to circle around like panthers, looking for more openings in each other's defences.

"You get that one for free," she laughed, her violet eyes crackling dangerously. "You won't get any more chances." Then she twirled her blade around in her hand and lashed out at Kitty's left shoulder. Instinctively, Kitty tried to phase, but instead of the knife passing harmlessly through her skin, it stabbed deep into her flesh and scraped the surface of the bone within. Kitty screamed and staggered backwards, the knife's serrated edges tearing more jagged wounds as it slid out of her body and causing her to drop the second knife she'd been carrying. The woman watched, amused, as Kitty struggled to stay upright, blood pouring down her arm, a stunned expression on her face. "Surprised? You don't think I'd fight a girl who can walk through walls without making you as solid as I am, do you? Oh yes – I know who you are, Katherine Pryde. I know what you're capable of."

Kitty felt her stomach churn in horror. How could this woman possibly know who she was?

"I'm this city's overseer, Katherine – it's my job to know everything that goes on," the woman replied without missing a beat, as if Kitty had spoken aloud. She aimed an arcing blow towards Kitty's left thigh, which Kitty only barely managed to block, dragging her knife downwards through air that felt like treacle in order to deflect the point of her opponent's weapon sideways.

"Why?" Kitty gasped, still feeling the after-effects of the wound in her shoulder. "Why did you come here?" She was getting dizzy and nauseous from the unexpected pain, and she was sure that that meant nothing good. "What did we ever do to you?"

"You continued your decadent capitalist lifestyle, naturally," the woman jeered. "Do you know how much better your life would be if you embraced us? There would be no more fighting, no more needless death – but no, you Americans always have to prevail, because you know best." The woman spat contemptuously at Kitty's feet, her lip curled in a sneer. "One finger up your nose and another glued to the remote control. That's your American Dream, isn't it?"

"We care about freedom!" Kitty retorted, swinging her knife wildly so as to lure the woman closer. She wasn't sure it would work, but she was gratified when her opponent took the bait and she was able to unload a punch with her injured arm. It impacted against the woman's cheek and sent her staggering away momentarily, although Kitty was sure from the moment the blow hit that she had probably done more damage to herself than her opponent. She howled as the wounded arm protested violently, but still managed to keep herself upright.

The woman shook her head clear of the brief disorientation the punch had caused, and sneered again. "Freedom? What do you Americans know about freedom? All you want is to be slaves to money and religion. If that's what you call freedom, girl, you can keep it."

"I'll take that over not even being able to think what I want," Kitty snarled, and tried a couple of searching jabs at the woman's mid-section with her dagger. Both times the woman deflected the blade away, and then she followed that up with a kick from her booted foot to the side of Kitty's thigh, folding Kitty's leg under her and making her fall awkwardly to the floor. She sprawled into the blood and grime, feeling its cloying stickiness coating her skin almost instantly and spitting out the metallic, iron tang as it splashed against her lips. Kitty felt her gorge rise as she did so, but she didn't have time to indulge it as she had to twist and block a downward slash by the other woman, rolling aside quickly and forcing a bit of breathing space between her and her opponent. As she did so, she felt a hard, cold metal object hitting her in the ribs, and realised that she had fallen on top of the woman's own Russian Army pistol. Knowing that she had only one opportunity to press this incredible advantage, she grasped the weapon with her right hand, quickly twisted over and aimed the gun right at the woman's heart before she could even register what was happening.

Then she fired.

In the instant between hearing the click of the trigger and the sound of the gun firing, she had just enough time to see the woman's face drain of colour, and then disappear in a cloud of acrid purple smoke that smelt of sulphur. The bullet that would have smashed through her ribcage and pulped her heart instead continued on into one of the front windows of the building, sending cracks spider-webbing crazily across its pristine surface, and Kitty felt a stab of disappointment that she hadn't been able to get such a high-profile kill.

 _Time to get out of here,_  she decided, and looked around to where her squad-mates had been standing frozen. Relief echoed throughout her body as she saw that they were all starting to move again, and weren't still frozen into one position. Still, that didn't exactly mean they were all safe just yet – they still had to get past the Soviet troops gathered outside the building. Soviet troops that, from what Kitty could see, were rapidly getting ready to move in and kill them all. She hoped that because the others were starting to move, she could use her powers again as well.  _Well, there's only one way to find out, Kit…_

"Grab onto me!" she cried out, after she'd picked up and retrieved her weapons. "We're getting outta here!" Quickly, Hank, Cecilia, Madrox, Logan and Val made a human chain – but not before Madrox had banged his hand against the wall and created five more dupes, who stayed separate. "Jamie?" Kitty asked, confused. "What are you doing?"

"We got a bag full of plastique sitting here, Kit," the first Madrox dupe replied. "I figure not using it would be a waste."

"But you need more than one person to blow up this much of this shit," the second added.

"So we're gonna do it for you," said the third, fourth and fifth dupes.

"It's gonna hurt like a bitch, but it'll be worth it," the original Madrox said, completing what his sidekicks said. "You guys better do this right." He flipped his first dupe some detonator caps and let the rest of them start scurrying around the lobby, placing the soft, pliable explosive at key points. "Maximum damage, minimum risk." Then he nodded at Kitty, and finished "Now we can get out of here."

Kitty nodded in response, and swallowed. Then she concentrated hard, and cautiously pushed herself out of phase with the rest of the world, carrying her friends with her as she went. It felt good to feel the world go immaterial around her again, and the pain in her left shoulder almost seemed to disappear as it did so. "Hold on, guys," she whispered, and moved out into the firing line of the Soviet troops, the daisy-chain of rebels totally immune to their bullets. Over to her right, Kitty could see the woman she'd just been fighting. Apparently the movement from inside the building to outside had been too quick for her, and she was unable to stand as blood ran slowly from her ears and nose.  _That explains a lot,_  Kitty thought, feeling not a bit upset, and she moved through the blizzard of hot lead towards the sealed manhole about three hundred feet in front of her. Twisting her body as much as she could, she unleashed a spray of bullets from her own rifle. It was wildly inaccurate, and didn't hit much of anything – but it made her feel better, anyway. She kept running, keeping Madrox's hand firmly clasped in her own, and risked a look back at the building. The Russian troops were being held back by a carpet of lead from Jamie's dupes, who'd each multiplied a dozen times over, creating duplicates of their weapons and ammunition along with each new Jamie. She was just about to turn her head back towards the manhole cover when she felt the ground tremble violently as the plastique from the bag exploded, shredding the front windows in billows of orange-red flame, and punching gaping holes in the infrastructure. Madrox staggered, blood beginning to pour from his nose as he did so, but Kitty made sure that she kept hold of his hand.

Cecilia wasn't so lucky, though, and the chain of rebels was broken for the briefest instant. Bullets knocked Logan to the ground as he instinctively threw himself in front of Val and Hank, sending him sprawling in a spray of blood and bone chips. Quickly, Kitty went solid again just so that Cecilia, still clutching Hank's pale fingers, could grab Madrox's hand again. Madrox, meanwhile, stomped his booted foot on the cracked tarmac and produced a screen of dupes to shield himself and his comrades from enemy fire, but Logan wasn't fast enough to get back onto the chain. "Go!" he yelled. "I'll be fine!"

"No way, man," Madrox mumbled through bloodied lips, and directed his dupes to stand alongside Logan, firing their rifles again and again. Every time one of them got hit, he grunted in pain and his footsteps got a little slower, but Kitty made sure to keep him upright – and as soon as Logan got reattached to the chain, she set off back to the manhole as quickly as she could. When she got to it, she saw that it was, predictably, welded closed, rigged with dozens of explosive charges and had barbed wire strung around it like Christmas decorations.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Everybody hold tight."

And then she jumped down through the manhole cover.

She watched wires, lumps of explosive and knots of booby-trapped pipes float by as she ghosted down to the sewer floor, and she risked a glance above herself to see whether everyone had made it through with her. Astonished, she saw that they were all relatively intact – even if Madrox was still looking close to collapse. She saw her feet were coming close to the stinking floor of the pipe and went solid, enjoying the curse from Logan as he hit the fetid, inky water's surface with a splash. Above ground, she could hear the satisfyingly solid thump of secondary explosions cooking off like popcorn, which she supposed meant that an ammo store in the Empire State had been touched off by the plastique, or one of the fires that were snaking their way through the building.  _Good. Fuck 'em,_  she thought sourly, her finger tightening around the trigger of her rifle.

"Everybody stay sharp," she said, stating the obvious just to make herself feel better. "Russkies'll probably be down here soon, so keep an eye out." Then she nodded at Logan and Val. "Any idea where we can go from here that's gonna be safe for more than a few hours?"

"No," Val replied, flatly. "The Ivans probably have all our old bases occupied by now."

"Then we find some new ones," Cecilia said. "Down, but not out, right?"

"Right," Logan agreed. "I'll check with Lorna, see if she can't let us stay with her a while." Then he turned to look Kitty in the eye. "You did good, kid. Maybe I'll let you seduce one of the regional governors after all."

Kitty laughed briefly, more out of relief than anything else. "Shut up, old man."

Logan smiled a rough, jagged smile, and moved towards the front of the group. "I'll take point," he said, popping both sets of claws. "Let's get outta here. We gotta show the Ivans they ain't won this city yet, not by a long shot."

The rebel squad began to move off, and as it did so, Kitty lingered behind a little in order to help Madrox keep up. "You did a very brave thing back there, you know," she said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," Madrox agreed, grunting in remembered pain. "I'm paying for it now, too."

"Don't worry," Kitty said, patting his hand with her own. "I'll make sure you get a reward when we find somewhere to rest tonight." Gently, she grasped his collar and guided his mouth onto hers for a moment. The release of tension came like a lightning bolt down her spine, and she almost felt her knees folding again. And once again, the pain in her shoulder seemed to disappear. "You're a good guy, Jamie. I'm glad you didn't get killed."

"So am I," Madrox replied. "So do I get kisses like that after every death-defying mission, or what?"

Kitty slapped his arm with the back of her hand. "Oh, shut up, you idiot…"

* * *

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock had been to Washington DC before, but she had never been quite so uneasy as she was now. The White House, from where the Soviet forces were directed nationally, loomed in front of her like a hanging judge. She still felt a nasty buzz at the rear of her head – an after-effect of the teleportation effect, she'd been told – but she hoped that that would be the worst she suffered today. Flanked on either side by heavily-armed soldiers, she was led through winding corridors until she was standing in front of the doors to the Oval Office.

"Thank you, Lieutenant Marko," she said to the huge, brutish man on her right. His sandy red hair was cut close to his scalp, and a dagger-scar snaked down one side of his face, and Elisabeth could have sworn he was smiling as she turned. Perhaps he'd seen too many senior officers be dragged out of the office and thrown to the Alaskan wolves not to be amused by the simple prospect of such an event, she thought with a sickening sensation of foreboding coiling in the pit of her stomach. She pushed open the door to the office and stepped quickly inside, saluting the man sat at the desk with a quick, efficient gesture. Whatever was going to happen here, she decided that she would at least face it with a little bit of her martial dignity intact.

"Ah, Comrade-Colonel Braddock," the man behind the desk said, saluting her in return after putting down his pen and settling back into his seat. His coal-black eyes fixed on her, and Elisabeth felt the sinking feeling worsening as he did so.

"Comrade-General Lehnsherr," she said, trying to keep a shiver out of her voice. "You asked to see me, sir?"

General Lehnsherr nodded. "I have been sent a report by yourself, detailing the destruction and heavy damage of several key parts of the Empire State Building base by rebel insurgents. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir." Elisabeth nodded.

"And I also note that KGB operative Major Jean Grey was killed in the incident. Is that also correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"You also had at least two rebel leaders in your custody, and you allowed them to be rescued by their comrades."

"Yes, sir."  _Just shoot me and get it over with,_  Elisabeth found herself thinking sourly.

"You also crippled the New York rebel movement for the foreseeable future, and managed a major breakthrough for our military."

"Sir?" Elisabeth was puzzled. "What… what breakthrough?"

"The man called James Logan was a rapid healer, was he not?" General Lehnsherr said. "Your head researcher Doctor MacTaggert managed to isolate the healing factor in his blood and was in the process of replicating it at the time of her laboratory's destruction. Doctor MacTaggert contacted me after the incident and passed on some of the notes she had managed to take with her when your forces removed her from the front line. There was more than enough information in those notes to begin mass-producing the healing enzyme for our soldiers. And since the New York rebel movement is currently in ruins, with their bases and weapons largely under our control, I'd say that the positives in this situation far outweigh the negatives, wouldn't you?" He shrugged, offering her a disarming smile that she didn't find reassuring in the slightest. "The KGB officer's death is of no consequence, if that's what you're concerned about. I have plenty of those." He sat back in his sear and opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a heavily-annotated map of North and South America and unfolding it onto the desk's surface so that it was facing Elisabeth. Tapping an area of it with a gloved fingertip, he said "Do you know what is happening in California at the moment?"

"There have been violent uprisings against our government there for the past six months," Elisabeth began, reciting the SAFN broadcasts almost from memory, "and the Soviet forces are overstretched almost to breaking point. Reinforcements are necessary, before it becomes a full-scale guerrilla conflict."

"Exactly," General Lehnsherr replied, pointing his finger at her for emphasis. "Our soldiers could benefit from strong leadership on the battlefield. A position there has recently become open for a new Commissar." He waited until realisation dawned on Elisabeth's face, and then reached into another drawer and handed her a bundle of papers. "Here are your new orders, Commissar-Colonel Braddock – good hunting. Dismissed." He stood and saluted her, and Elisabeth returned it with a crisp salute of her own. She turned on one heel then, and marched out of the general's office with a renewed sense of purpose.

_Good hunting indeed…_


End file.
